Palladium micellar nanohybrids with tunable nonlinear optical response

•Pd-polymer micellar nanohybrids with tunable size Pd core.•Enhancement of the nonlinear optical response by decreasing the size of Pd core.•The Pd nanohybrids exhibited strong NLO refraction under infrared excitation.

In the present work, the third-order nonlinear optical response of two different types of Pd-polymer micellar nanohybrids are investigated using 4 ns, visible and infrared laser excitation. The prepared nanohybrids were comprised of controllable nanosized Pd core surrounded by either LauMAx-b-AEMAy (i.e. poly(lauryl methacrylate)-block-poly(2-(acetoacetoxy) ethyl methacrylate)) or CbzEMAx-b-AEMAy (i.e. poly(2-(N-carbazolyl) ethyl methacrylate)-block-poly(2-(acetoacetoxy) ethyl methacrylate)) self-assembled diblock copolymer chains. The nonlinear optical parameters and the third-order susceptibility χ(3) were determined in the aforementioned systems, in which the block lengths within the diblock copolymers as well as the metal content varied. All micellar nanohybrids were found to exhibit strong nonlinear optical response, particularly in the infrared, while reduction of the size of the metallic core within the micelles, resulted in increasing of the NLO response.

Graphical abstractFigure optionsDownload full-size imageDownload high-quality image (88 K)Download as PowerPoint slide