Tunable optical nonlinearity of indium tin oxide for optical switching in epsilon-near-zero region

The propagation of light in the epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) region of materials exhibits intriguing linear and nonlinear optical phenomenon that have been extensively exploited for a plethora of applications. Here, we show that the optical properties as well as the ENZ wavelength of magnetron-sputtered indium tin oxide (ITO) thin films could be judiciously engineered. The measurement of nonlinear optical properties reveals that the control of deposition conditions allows for the tuning of absorptive optical nonlinearity between saturable absorption and reverse saturable absorption. The ENZ wavelength for the ITO film is deduced as around 1553 nm. We obtain the highest third-order nonlinear absorption coefficient and imaginary part of third-order nonlinear susceptibility for the ITO thin film through Z-scan method as -50.56 cm/GW and ∼38 × 10