Preparation and nonlinear optical response of novel palladium-containing micellar nanohybrids

► We investigate the nonlinear optical response of Pd based micellar nanohybrids. ► They have controllable sizes and consist of Pd core covered by AEMA-based copolymers. ► They were excited by 35ps laser pulses at 532 and 1064 nm. ► Positive refractive and absorptive nonlinearities were found. ► Their NLO response did not indicate an enhancement due to plasmon resonance effects. The synthesis and characterization of novel micellar nanohybrids with controllable sizes consisting of palladium nanosized core and covered by well-defined poly(lauryl methacrylate)- block-poly(2-(acetoacetoxy)ethyl methacrylate) (pLauMA- b-pAEMA) diblock copolymers are reported. Their nonlinear optical (NLO) response (i.e. nonlinear refraction and absorption and the third-order susceptibility χ (3)) is also studied under 35 ps laser excitation both in the visible and in the infrared and found to be insensitive to the size of the micelles while it was found to be greatly affected by the molar fraction of the AEMA block. To the best of our knowledge it is the first time that such Pd micellar nanohybrids are synthesized and investigated towards their NLO properties. The magnitude of the nonlinear optical response of these nanohybrids renders them promising candidates for potential optoelectronic applications.