ABSTRACT
The electro-optic effect is an important mechanism for actively tuning the refractive index of materials. This effect has various important applications in communication, switching, modulation, and nonlinear optics. This research measured the quadratic electro-optic coefficient for a graphene oxide (GO) film with ellipsometry spectroscopy. The results show that this coefficient is about three orders of magnitude greater than that of other materials. The GO film with its giant electro-optic Kerr coefficient can improve devices based on this effect. For example, it can decrease power consumption and the complexity of these devices due to the need for a lower electric field. In addition, birefringence is obtained of about Δn = 0.08 at 730â nm, which can lead to promising improvements in commercial devices, such as the reduction of working voltage below 10â V.
ABSTRACT
Manipulation of the nonlinear optical response of materials plays a significant role in photonics applications; however, it may be irreversible, untunable, and uncontrollable, which makes it difficult. In this Letter, we present a mechanical-hydrodynamical approach through a microchannel to tune the nonlinear absorption response of graphene oxide liquid crystals. In this material, the optical properties depend on the flake orientation. This feature has helped us to study empirically the dependency of the nonlinear absorption coefficients to external hydrodynamical force by employing the Z-scan technique. The experimental results show that increasing the flow rate in the microchannel enhances both linear and nonlinear absorption coefficients and, as a result, reduces the laser beam transmission through the sample. It has been observed that the percentage change in the nonlinear absorption coefficient of the sample is significant due to the flow rate.
