Strengthened Optical Nonlinearity of V₂C Hybrids Inlaid with Silver Nanoparticles

The investigation of nonlinear optical characteristics resulting from the light-matter interactions of two-dimensional (2D) nano materials has contributed to the extensive use of photonics. In this study, we synthesize a 2D MXene (V₂C) monolayer nanosheet by the selective etching of Al from V₂AlC at room temperature and use the nanosecond Z-scan technique with 532 nm to determine the nonlinear optical characters of the Ag@V₂C hybrid. The z-scan experiment reveals that Ag@V₂C hybrids usually exhibits saturable absorption owing to the bleaching of the ground state plasma, and the switch from saturable absorption to reverse saturable absorption takes place. The findings demonstrate that Ag@V₂C has optical nonlinear characters. The quantitative data of the nonlinear absorption of Ag@V₂C varies with the wavelength and the reverse saturable absorption results from the two-photon absorption, which proves that Ag@V₂C hybrids have great potential for future ultrathin optoelectronic devices.