Optical limiting in single-walled carbon nanotube suspensions

Optical limiting behaviour of suspensions of single-walled carbon nanotubes in water, ethanol and ethylene glycol is reported. Experiments with 532 nm, 15 ns duration laser pulses show that optical limiting occurs mainly due to nonlinear scattering. The observed host liquid dependence of the optical limiting effect in different suspensions suggests that the scattering originates from microbubbles formed due to absorption-induced heating. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.