A soluble coordination polymer and its sol–gel-derived amorphous films: synthesis and third-order nonlinear optical properties

A new soluble tris(8-hydroxyquinoline) aluminium (AlQ3)-based coordination polymer named CP-B8QBA-Al has been synthesized. In contrast with the traditional coordination polymers, this new coordination polymer CP-B8QBA-Al does not crystallize and can be fabricated into amorphous films by conventional spin-coating. The third-order nonlinear optical properties of the CP-B8QBA-Al films were investigated using the Z-scan method at 800 nm and 1064 nm, the results show the coordination polymer films have a third-order NLO susceptibility χ(3) value as high as 1.66 × 10−10 esu without nonlinear absorption.