Sodium borosilicate glass doped with Ni nanoparticles: Structure, formation mechanism and nonlinear optical properties

Sodium borosilicate(Na 2 O-B 2 O 3 -SiO 2 , NBS) glass doped with Ni nanoparticles has been successfully prepared by a sol-gel technique combined with atmosphere control method. Thermal gravimetric (TG) and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) are used to study the feasibility formation mechanism from the xerogel to densified NBS glass network. X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) as well as X-ray photoelectron spectra (XPS) analysis reveal that the cubic structure of metal Ni with uniform spherical shape has formed in the NBS glass matrix. The average size is determined to be 11.85 nm. In particular, a mechanism for the formation of Ni/NBS glass is proposed based on the microstructure, BET analysis and N 2 adsorption aperture curve. At last, nonlinear optical properties of Ni/NBS glass are investigated by using the Z-scan technique with a Ti:Sapphire laser at 800 nm. Results illustrate that the third-order optical nonlinear susceptibility χ (3) of the glass reaches to 5.51 × 10 −12  esu.