Optical Limiting Response of Porous Carbon Dispersions.

With the wide application of intense lasers, the protection of human eyes and detectors from laser damage is becoming more and more strict. In this paper, we study the nonlinear optical limiting (OL) properties of porous carbon with a super large specific surface area (2.9 × 10 m/g) using the nanosecond Z-scan technique. Compared to the traditional OL material C, the porous carbon material shows an excellent broadband limiting effect, and the limiting thresholds correspond to 0.11 J/cm for 532 nm and 0.25 J/cm for 1064 nm pulses, respectively. The nonlinear scattering experiments showed that the OL behavior was mainly attributed to the nonlinear scattering effect, which is caused by the rapid growth and expansion of bubbles in the dispersion induced by laser irradiation, and the scattered light distribution is consistent with the results of Mie's scattering. These results suggest that porous carbon materials are expected to be applied to the field of laser protection in the future to further protect the human eye and precision optical instruments.