Large third-order nonlinear optical properties of cadmium oxide thin films

This study represents the first investigation on CdO films by the z-scan technique. Deposition experiments in a low-pressure horizontal hot-wall reactor on SiO2 substrates result in CdO thin films that show large third-order nonlinear optical properties. Optical properties of CdO were tuned by varying the deposition conditions. AFM images suggest that MOCVD under more oxidizing condition results in smaller crystal sizes. The decrease of the particle dimension causes larger optical nonlinearity. Monotonic increase of the chi((3)) values with the increase of the laser pulse duration is observed by comparing our results with similar literature data for metal oxides.