Broadband thermally induced nonlinearity for all-optical diode in ligand-guided growth-antimony nanoparticles

Herein, antimony nanoparticles (Sb-NPs) were fabricated via a modified ligand-guided growth method, and their broadband nonlinear optical response in the visible-to-near-infrared region was investigated using the spatial self-phase modulation (SSPM) technique. The results reveal that antimony nanoparticles (Sb-NPs) exhibit a large effective nonlinear refractive coefficient of up to 5.50 × 10^-5 cm² W^-1 at 532 nm for the 0.30 mg mL^-1 dispersion. On this basis, a spatially asymmetric optical propagation configuration was constructed by cascading the Sb-NPs and hBN dispersions, producing a direction-dependent nonreciprocal light transmission.