Optical and photoconductive properties exhibited by silver doped zinc oxide thin films

An inert (N₂) annealing process allows us to change the electrical and optical response of silver doped zinc oxide thin solid films prepared by an ultrasonic spray pyrolysis method. An enhancement in the photoconductivity excited by a far-resonance irradiation at 650 nm wavelength was observed. Z-scan studies were performed with a picosecond Nd:YAG laser system at 532 nm. Our experiments indicate that a strong optical third order nonlinearity is developed in the annealed sample, and it seems to be dominantly due to a saturable absorption. In addition, we achieved a near-resonance optical modulation in a non-degenerated two-wave interaction with optical beams at 405 nm and 445 nm wavelengths.