Unexpected Broadband Optical Limiting Properties of Antimonene Quantum Dots

Antimonene has been found to possess excellent nonlinear refractive and saturable absorption properties recently. To further investigate its optical limiting properties, we prepared uniform antimonene quantum dots (AMQDs) via a facile ionic liquid-assisted exfoliation method. Thereafter the nonlinear absorption of the atomically thin AMQDs was studied using the open aperture Z-scan technique in the nanosecond laser pulse regime. Z-scan measurements indicate that the prepared AMQDs exhibited superior optical limiting properties at 532 nm and 1064 nm excitation, implying the antimonene hold potential for developing broadband nonlinear optical devices.