Issue 6, 2019

One-pot synthesis of sub-10 nm LiNbO3 nanocrystals exhibiting a tunable optical second harmonic response

Abstract

Nanophotonics, dealing with the properties of light interacting with nanometer scale materials and structures, has emerged as a sought after platform for sensing and imaging applications, and is impacting fields that include advanced information technology, signal processing circuits, and cryptography. Lithium niobate (LiNbO3) is a unique photonic material, often referred to as the “silicon of photonics” due to its excellent optical properties. In this article, we introduce a solution-phase method to prepare single-crystalline LiNbO3 nanoparticles with average diameters of 7 nm. This one-pot approach forms well-dispersed LiNbO3 nanocrystals without additional organic additives (e.g., surfactants) to control growth and aggregation of the nanoparticles. Formation of these LiNbO3 nanocrystals proceeds through a non-aqueous sol–gel reaction, in which lithium hydroxide and niobium hydroxide species were generated in situ. The reaction proceeded through both a condensation and crystallization of these reactants to form the solid nanoparticles. These nanocrystals of LiNbO3 were active for optical second harmonic generation (SHG) with a tunable response from 400 to 500 nm. These nanoparticles could enable further development of non-linear optical techniques such as SHG microscopy for bioimaging, which requires the dimensions of nanoparticles to be well below 100 nm.

Graphical abstract: One-pot synthesis of sub-10 nm LiNbO3 nanocrystals exhibiting a tunable optical second harmonic response

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
25 Aug 2018
Accepted
19 Apr 2019
First published
24 Apr 2019
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Nanoscale Adv., 2019,1, 2268-2275

One-pot synthesis of sub-10 nm LiNbO3 nanocrystals exhibiting a tunable optical second harmonic response

R. F. Ali, M. Bilton and B. D. Gates, Nanoscale Adv., 2019, 1, 2268 DOI: 10.1039/C8NA00171E

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