Study of the electrical and nanosecond third order nonlinear optical properties of ZnO films doped with Au and Pt nanoparticles

•ZnO films doped with Pt and Au nanoparticles were synthetized.•The inclusion of metallic nanoparticles in the film improves optical nonlinearities.•Conductivity of the films was enhanced by the contribution of the nanoparticles.

Zinc oxide films doped with platinum and gold nanoparticles were deposited by the spray pyrolysis technique on glass substrates. A titanium dioxide sol–gel solution containing gold and platinum aqueous ions was employed for synthesizing the nanoparticles by ultraviolet-light irradiation. The conductive properties of the samples were characterized by the electrochemical impedance spectroscopy technique. Our results showed that the impedance of zinc oxide films doped with metallic nanoparticles was, by far, lower than typical measurements in zinc oxide films. A strong enhancement in the nanosecond nonlinear optical response was also obtained in the studied metallic doped films. A vectorial two-mixing experiment performed at 532 nm and 4 ns allowed us to evaluate the sample with a third order optical nonlinearity described by approximately | χ1111(3)| = 2.6 × 10− 8 esu.