Synthesis, characterization and femtosecond nonlinear saturable absorption behavior of copper phthalocyanine nanocrystals doped-PMMA polymer thin films

•Highly CPc-NCs were prepared using green approach.•CPc-NCs crystalline structure and morphology were characterized by XDR and SEM.•Estimated average crystallite size of CPc-NCs ranges from 31.48 to 42.5 nm.•Saturable absorption behavior is observed with femtosecond Z-scan technique.

In this work, we report the femtosecond nonlinear saturable absorption response of synthesized copper phthalocyanine nanocrystals (CPc-NCs)-doped PMMA polymer thin films. The samples were initially characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR), UV–Vis and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) techniques. The crystalline phase and morphological analysis revealed nanocrystals of monoclinic structure with an average crystallite size between 31.38 nm and 42.5 nm. The femtosecond Z-scan study at 800 nm central wavelength indicated a saturable absorption behavior of which the mechanism is closely related to the surface plasmon resonance (SPR) of the particles. This nonlinear effect could potentially make the CPc-NCs useful in nonlinear optical devices.