Manifestation of nano-sized effects in photoinduced nonlinear optics of CdI2–Cu layered single crystals

The infrared (IR) induced second harmonic generation in the thin CdI₂–Cu crystalline layers was discovered. With decreasing thickness of the CdI₂–Cu crystals up to several nanometers value of second-order nonlinear optical susceptibility d₁₄ (at wavelength λ=2.76 μm) for the output IR-induced SHG significantly increases. For the Cu content about 0.4% the output SHG signal achieves its maximum at the sample thickness below 2 nm. It is important that for the samples with larger film thickness the corresponding changes have substantially different properties. Limitation of the d₁₄ at the larger concentration is probably caused by formation of the Cu clusters limiting the enhancement of the hyperpolarizability for particular cluster as well as total nonlinear dielectric susceptibility.