Abstract & Overview
The third order non-linear optical properties of Buckminster fullerene (C60) molecule has been studied using a Nd:YAG laser, in the visible and in the infrared region. The solvent using toluene was specifically used because of low threshold intensity for an optical limiter application. Closed aperture Z-scan technique was adopted to characterize the material due to its simplicity and high sensitivity in measuring the third-order optical nonlinearity. This allows computing the contributions of nonlinear absorption and nonlinear refraction towards nonlinearity. Saturable Absorption (SA) for C60 nano particles is also established. RSA is not established. FT-IR studies is also carried out to characterize the sample and to correlate the NLO studies.