Abstract

In recent years there has been great interest in semiconductor doped glasses with respect to their third order nonlinear optical, (nlo) properties [1]. Such systems have been found to have large third-order nonlinearities, and have exhibited enhancements in their nonlinearities when the semiconductor crystallites within the glass are very small, on the scale of tens of Angstroms. These enhancement effects have been attributed to quantum confinement effects which manifest themselves when the crystallite dimensions are reduced below the Bohr radius of the exciton associated with the nonlinearity. So far interest has centred on systems consisting of inorganic semiconductors such as CdS and CdSe[2] in host glasses and occasionally polymers [3]

© 1993 Optical Society of America