Optical limiting action of few layered graphene oxide dispersed in different solvents

•Few layered graphene oxide was prepared and characterized.•Few layered GO dispersions exhibit strong optical limiting depending on the solvent.•Few layered GO exhibited superior optical limiting than that of single layer GO.

In this work, we report on new results regarding the nonlinear optical response and the optical limiting action of few layered graphene oxide dispersed in various organic solvents, such as N,N-Dimethylformamide (DMF), Tetrahydrofuran (THF), (N-Methyl-2-Pyrrolidone (NMP), Chlorobenzene (CB), 1,2-Dichlorobenzene (o-DCB), and 1-Chloronaphthalene (CN). Few layered graphene oxide was found to exhibit saturable absorption for low incident intensity and reverse saturable absorption at higher intensity. Its nonlinear absorption was found to be significantly larger than that of single layer graphene oxide, depending upon the solvent used becoming maximum for heavier solvents like e.g. CN and o-DCB. The present results are discussed and compared with other literature reports.

Graphical abstractFigure optionsDownload full-size imageDownload high-quality image (92 K)Download as PowerPoint slide