Anisotropic Two-Photon Absorption and Second Harmonic Generation in Single Crystals of Silver(I) Coordination Complexes

Metal complexes have been gaining attention in recent times over the traditional inorganic materials such as nonlinear optical materials. Here, we report both two-photon absorption (2PA) and second harmonic generation (SHG) from single crystals of two Ag(I) complexes with considerable optical anisotropy. We demonstrate that by controlling the incident light polarization, the tunability between these two nonlinear optical processes can be achieved. The deff values of the observed SHG from one complex are determined to be one order of magnitude greater than β-BBO crystals.