Broadband Visible Nonlinear Absorption and Ultrafast Dynamics of the Ti₃C₂ Nanosheet

Abstract

The Ti3C2 nanosheet, as a new two-dimensional (2D) group, has been found to have attractive characteristics as material for electromagnetic shielding and energy storage. In this study, the nonlinear broadband absorption and ultrafast dynamics of the Ti3C2 nanosheet were investigated using nanosecond open-aperture Z-scan and transient absorption techniques. The mechanism of two-photon absorption (TPA) was revealed in the visible region (475–700 nm). At lower incident energies, nonlinear absorption could not happen. When the laser energy increased to 0.64 GW/cm2, electrons in the valence band could absorb two photons and jump to the conduction band, with TPA occurring, which meant that the sample exhibited reverse saturable absorption (RSA). In addition, when transient absorption was used to investigate the ultrafast carrier dynamics of the sample, it demonstrated that the relaxation contains a fast decay component and a slow one, which are obtained from electron–phonon and phonon–phonon interactions, respectively. Moreover, with the increasing pump fluence, the fast decay lifetime τ1 increased from 3.9 to 4.5 ps, and the slow one τ2 increased from 11.1 to 13.2 ps. These results show that the Ti3C2 nanosheet has potential applications in broadband optical limiters.

Keywords

• nonlinear absorption
• transient absorption
• 2D material
• MXene