Surface Plasmon Resonance Dependent Third-Order Optical Nonlinearities of Silver Nanoplates

A systematic study of the surface plasmon resonance (SPR)-dependent nonlinear optical response of Ag nanoplates is presented and discussed. The Ag nanoplates were synthesized using the well-known seed-mediated growth method. By performing the z-scan method with a nanosecond laser (532 nm, 5 ns), the optical nonlinearities of the Ag nanoplates, prepared tuning the SPR contribution in the 400–1000 nm range, were determined. The results showed a SPR-related competition between the saturable absorption and reverse saturable absorption mechanisms, while the nonlinear refraction changed from self-defocusing to self-focusing. Furthermore, the scattering effects contribute to determine the nature of the optical limiting response. The observed SPR-tunable third order optical nonlinearities make Ag nanoplates a suitable candidate to be used in different fields, i.e., laser pulse generation, optical limiting, or bio-imaging applications.