Linear and nonlinear optical susceptibilities and hyperpolarizability of borate LiNaB4O7 single crystals: Theory and experiment J. Appl. Phys. 112, 053526 (2012) Effect of Lorentz local field for optical second order nonlinear susceptibility in ZnO nanorod J. Appl. Phys. 111, 103112 (2012) Size dependent optical properties of the CdSe-CdS core-shell quantum dots in the strong confinement regime J. Appl. Phys. 111, 074312 (2012) Structural origin of the nonlinear optical properties of lead niobium germanate film glasses J. Appl. Phys. 110, 023522 (2011) Methyl groups at dielectric and metal surfaces studied by sum-frequency generation in co-and counterpropagating configurations J. Chem. Phys. 135, 044704 (2011) Additional information on J. Appl. Phys.An investigation of Au/SiO 2 composite multilayer films with a large third-order optical nonlinearity is reported in this article. Multilayer films containing Au nanoparticles with narrow size and shape distributions can be obtained by controlling the thickness of the Au layer, as well as the annealing temperature and time duration. It is found that the peak of surface plasmon resonance ͑SPR͒ of films with mean nanoparticle size of 30 nm is located at 2.35 eV with a width of 350 meV. The SPR peak of films containing larger or smaller particles red-shifts and broadens due to the particle size and shape effects. The third-order optical nonlinear susceptibility (3) of these films has a maximum value of about 5.1ϫ10 Ϫ6 esu at 532 nm when the mean nanoparticle size is around 30 nm. We attribute the observed size dependence of (3) to the competition between the enhancement of the local field factor and the skin-depth effect.

A nanometer-scale recording technique has been demonstrated on an amorphous GeSb2Te4 film with an atomic force microscope (AFM). Data are recorded by locally changing the electrical property of the film with a conductive AFM probe. The conductance of the film is able to be increased more than one hundred times by applying a pulse voltage between the probe and the film. The recorded data are read by detecting the change of the conductance with the probe. The simultaneous measurement of the topographic and conductance images with the AFM shows that the surface topography of the recorded regions is not changed during the recording process. The smallest recorded region is 10 nm in diameter, which corresponds to a data storage density of 1 Tbit/cm2.

Small Ag particles were embedded in SiO2 glass thin films by a multi-target sputtering method. The mean diameter of Ag particles in the as-deposited film with 28.0 at. % of Ag was estimated to be 4.4 nm and it was increased to 24.0 nm when the film was heat-treated at 700 °C for 3 h. The diameter was proportional to the cube root of the heat-treatment time, suggesting that the Ag particles grew in the supersaturated solid solution. In the optical absorption spectra of the heat-treated films, the absorption peak due to the surface plasmon resonance of Ag particles was observed about 410 nm. The peak intensity became large and the full width at half maximum of the absorption band was decreased with increasing the diameter of Ag particles.

A multitarget sputtering method was applied to prepare Ag particles embedded in SiO2 glass thin films. In the optical absorption spectra of the films, the absorption peak due to the surface plasmon resonance of Ag particles was clearly observed at the wavelength of 390–406 nm. The full width at half-maximum of the absorption band is decreased with increasing diameter of Ag particles. The third-order nonlinear susceptibility at 400 nm was estimated to be 1.6×10-8 esu for the film with 9.0 at% of Ag by means of a degenerated four-wave mixing.