Nonlinear optical properties of semiconductor-doped silica gel glass

Glass doped with semiconductor microcrystals in nanometer size has attracted much attention for its nonlinear optical properties. Compared with other semiconductor material preparation techniques, the sol-gel process is promising because it´s a low temperature process and has many advantages such as high chemical purity, high microcrystal content, and narrow crystal size distribution. This paper describes the preparation, structure and optical properties of silica glasses doped with II-VI compound semiconductor microcrystal by the solgel technique and in-situ growth technique and the nonlinear optic susceptibility was found to be one order of magnitude higher than that of the silica glass.