The second-harmonic generation in chalcogenide glass-ceramic doped with CdS nanocrystals

•The manuscrit present a novel way to prepare non linear glass-ceramics.•These glass-ceramics are transparent from the visible range up to the mid-infrared (11 µm).•This process could be extend to get glass-ceramics with desired properties.

An innovative way is proposed here to synthesize chalcogenide glass-ceramic by hot-pressing a combination of Ge20Sb12S68 glassy powder and non-linear CdS nano-particles. The cadmium sulfide nano-particles, which possess the second-harmonic generation property, were synthesized from basic cadmium solution strongly complexed by amine. The obtained glass-ceramics present homogeneous distribution of the crystals. The transmission reaches 30% at 5 µm and up to 60% at 10.6 µm. The second-harmonic generation at 0.9 µm has been detected. This technique can overcome the uncontrollable hetero-crystallization which tends to occur in the glass-ceramics prepared by the conventional thermal treatment method.