Structural and optical properties of cordierite glass-ceramic doped in polyurethane matrix

The cordierite (2Mg.2Al2O3.5SiO2) was synthesized by the Pechini method and added to polyurethane open cell (PUOC) foam in three different percentages. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) was employed to evaluate the bonding characteristics of PUOC/cordierites. The effect of temperature on the synthesis of cordierite and crystallographic structure of the final product were studied by XRD. By increasing the temperature, the widths of the XRD peaks decreased, approaching the single crystal spectrum. The SEM results show that by increasing of cordierite percentage in PUOC foam, the matrix structure was much damaged. Using Z-scan method, optical nonlinearities of samples were measured by continues wave (CW) laser at the wavelength of 532 nm. The nonlinear refractive (NLR) indices and nonlinear absorption (NLA) coefficients of the synthesized samples are obtained in the order of 10−8 (cm2/W) with negative sign and 10−5 (cm/W), respectively. The origin of optical nonlinearity may be attributed to the presence of strong saturable absorption (SA) effect.