NANOMATERIALS AS OPTICAL LIMITERS

Abstract
Optical limiters based on several different classes of nanomaterials are reviewed. The systems under consideration include metal and semiconductor nanoparticles and nanoscale carbon materials. For the latter, the optical limiting properties of carbon nanoparticles, fullerenes, and suspended and solubilized carbon nanotubes are summarized and compared. Mechanistic implications of the available experimental results are discussed in terms of the comparison between nonlinear scattering versus nonlinear absorption as the dominating optical limiting mechanism for different nanomaterials and for different physico-chemical states of a nanomaterial.