Nonlinear nanolayered polymers: ID photonic materials with applications to optical limiting

Summary form only given. New micro- and nano-layer polymeric materials have been fabricated by an extrusion method. The materials consist of up to many thousands of layers with a layer thickness down to 30 nm or smaller. The extrusion is a continuous process that yields polymeric photonic materials that are flexible sheets with large surface areas. We report nonlinear ID layered materials that were fabricated by dispersing nonlinear dyes in alternate layers. These new materials have a modulation in the complex nonlinear refractive index in the direction normal to the surface of the layers. There are several potential applications of these nanostructured materials including optical limiting.