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Fast electrochemical activation of the broadband saturable absorption of tungsten oxide nanoporous film

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Abstract

The on-demand modulation of defects in materials for the effective modulation of optical nonlinearity is desirable, while it remains a great challenge. In this work, we demonstrate that electrochemical activation is a facile and convenient approach to modulating the broadband third-order nonlinear absorption of nanoporous tungsten oxide (WO3−x) thin film. The film does not exhibit optical nonlinearity at the initial state, while shows a distinct saturable absorption under an applied voltage of −2.5 V with the excitation of 515, 800, and 1,030 nm laser. The nonlinear absorption coefficient (βeff) is −766.38 ± 6.67 cm·GW−1 for 1,030 nm laser, −624.24 ± 17.15 cm·GW−1 for 800 nm laser, and −120.70 ± 11.49 cm·GW−1 for 515 nm laser, and the performance is competitive among inorganic saturable absorbers. The activation is accomplished in 2 min. The performance enhancement is ascribed to the formation of abundant in-gap defect states because of the reduction of the tungsten atoms, and a Pauli-blocking effect occurs during the excitation of in-gap defect states. The small feature size of WO3−x (∼ 12 nm) enables the effective and fast introduction and removal of the defects in porous film, and accordingly the fast and broadband modulation of optical nonlinearity. Our results suggest a controllable, effective, and convenient approach to tuning the nonlinear absorption of materials.

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Acknowledgements

This research was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 51772214, 51432006, and 51701170), the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (No. 2011DFG52970), the Ministry of Education of China (IRT14R23), 111 Project (No. B13025), the Innovation Program of Shanghai Municipal Education Commission, the national youth talent support program (No. W03070073), and the project of science and technology plan of Fujian Province (No. 2018J01520).

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  1. School of Chemical Science and Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, 200092, China

    Ruipeng Hou, Hui Li, Mengjuan Diao, Yanhui Sun, Ying Liang, Zhipeng Huang & Chi Zhang

  2. State Key Laboratory of Photocatalysis on Energy and Environment, College of Chemistry, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou, 350002, China

    Zhiyang Yu

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  1. Ruipeng Hou
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  2. Hui Li
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Hou, R., Li, H., Diao, M. et al. Fast electrochemical activation of the broadband saturable absorption of tungsten oxide nanoporous film. Nano Res. 15, 326–332 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-021-3478-9

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