High dynamic range optical limiting in fullerene doped porous glasses

A diffusion-controlled technique of obtaining gradient in molecular distribution of C₆₀ molecules in porous vycor glass is presented. Here toluene solution of C₆₀ is allowed to diffuse only in one-dimension. The molecular distribution in the doped glass is measured by transmission method. By comparing optical limiting performance in the graded and uniformly doped glasses, we show that there is about 10-fold increase in the dynamic range in graded device. Received: 10 July 2001 / Accepted: 11 January 2002 / Published online: 3 May 2002 RID="*" ID="*"Corresponding author. E-mail: mukesh@cat.ernet.in