Abstract
Optical limitation (OL) performances of the gold nanoclusters protected by C60-tpy have been investigated with 8 ns pulses at 532 nm. The experimental results show that the nanocomposite possesses OL effects superior to C60 in toluene. The main mechanism of OL is attributed to the nonlinear absorption and subsequently induced nonlinear scattering during excitation of the pulse. Ageing of the nanocomposite chloroform solution in air lowers the OL performances by a factor of 2.4, which can be due to the formation of aggregates of large gold particles.