New Metal Organic Nonlinear Optical Complexes

Abstract

The goal of the research in this grant is to optimize metal-organic complexes for nonlinear optical (NLO) applications, by determining how variations in the metal centers and types of ligands will affect the NLO properties of the complexes. We studied a number of Pd (II) and Pt(II) complexes of phosphine ligand, and we found that these complexes exhibit both NLO refraction and NLO absorption that depends both on the nature of the phosphine ligand and on the nature of the metal center and its coordination geometry. We also observed large optical nonlinearities in Mo(CO)4 complexes. We performed extensive studies of these complexes and we observed strong optical limiting in these complexes for 5.8 ns laser pulses at 532 nm. Finally, we began to explore a series of asymmetric pentaazadentate porphyrin-like metal complexes ((R-APPC)Mcl(n)). These complexes show strong reverse saturable absorptions on a picosecond time scale. The optical nonlinearities are dependent on the conjugated R group and the metal center, so that complexes with even better optical nonlinearities might be obtained in the future by a judicious choice of ligands and metals. Hence, this class of asymmetric pentaazadentate porphyrin-like metal complexes shows great promise for optical power limiting applications.

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 15, 2000
Accession Number
ADA386111

Entities

People

  • Chris M. Lawson
  • Gary M. Gray

Organizations

  • University of Alabama

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Absorption
  • Abstracts
  • Chemistry
  • Coordination Complexes
  • Department Of Defense
  • Geometry
  • Laser Pulses
  • Materials
  • Nanosecond Time
  • Optical Properties
  • Organic Compounds
  • Organophosphorus Compounds
  • Phosphine
  • Picosecond Time
  • Porphyrins
  • Refraction
  • Wave Mixing

Readers

  • Electrochemical Surface Science
  • Nanocomposite Materials Science
  • Optical Physics and Photonics.

Technology Areas

  • Directed Energy