Titanium dioxide (TiO2) films have been fabricated on fused quartz and Si(001) substrates by pulsed laser deposition technique and the single-phase anatase and rutile films were obtained under the optimal conditions. The surface images and optical transmission spectra were investigated by scanning electron microscopy and double beam spectrophotometer, respectively. The values of optical band-gap and linear refractive index of the anatase and rutile films were determined. The optical nonlinearities of the films were measured by Z-scan method using a femtosecond laser (50 fs) at the wavelength of 800 nm. Through the open-aperture and closed-aperture Z-scan measurements, the real and imaginary parts of the third-order nonlinear optical susceptibility were calculated and the results show that the anatase phase TiO2 films exhibit larger nonlinear refractive effects compared with rutile phase. The figure of merit, T, defined by T=beta lambda/n(2), was calculated to be 0.8 for anatase films, meeting the requirement of T<1 and showing potential applications in all-optical switching devices. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.