Abstract

Lasers are currently indispensable for many military and civil applications and there is a considerable need for a material to be included into a device for laser damage prevention of optoelectronic devices and for people protection. The overall objectives of this project are:
(1) to validate a laboratory scale technology for synthesis of an innovative class of graphene based nonlinear optical materials in visible and infrared domains.
(2) to build a device that incorporate the synthesized materials. A composite material graphene oxide (GO)silicophosphate (SP) as bulk/films and GO/rGO (reduced GO) films, prepared by solgel, will be investigated.
These materials have the role to lower their optical transmittance when incident laser beam intensities are increasing above a threshold value, ensuring a constant intensity of the transmitted laser beam and preventing thus the damages to human eye and different optical sensors. Z-scan investigations will explore the nonlinear optical properties and optical limiting performances of these materials all along with the technological chain and will allow the selection of the best performing material to be used in the final prototype device.