Third harmonic generation in undoped and X doped ZnO films (X: Ce, F, Er, Al, Sn) deposited by spray pyrolysis

There is a current interest in research of wide band gap semiconductor materials for the purposes of third order nonlinear optical properties in view of optoelectronics applications. Materials for nonlinear optics should present important changes of nonlinear intensity, dependence on changes of nonlinear refractive index, short response time, and weak absorption losses. We report the results of the third order nonlinear optical susceptibilities of undoped and doped (cerium, fluorine, erbium, aluminum, and tin) zinc oxide films using the third harmonic generation technique at 1064 nm wavelength region in picoseconds regime. Thin films were grown on glass substrate by the spray pyrolysis technique at different temperatures of substrates and characterized by using the x-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscope, transmission, and photoluminescence. A strong third harmonic signal was obtained from the studied films with a good crystallinity and roughness. We have found that at high conductivity, there is a big conversion of the third harmonic signal at different dopants and at an appropriate concentration. We might say that the morphology and the crystalline quality of the films are the main factors for this high conversion. (c) 2007 American Institute of Physics.