Nonlinear optical absorption properties of two chiral polybinaphthyls with the same backbone but different electron acceptor hydroxyl and octoxy were studied in tetrahydrofuran solution. When excited by 100 fs 800 nm laser pulses, the up-converted fluorescence were observed and the intensities related to the different input irradiances were measured to confirm the two-photon excited fluorescence. The two-photon absorption coefficients were obtained as 4.82 cm GW(-1) and 12.36 cm GW(-1) with 100 fs pulses at 800 nm for two polymers, respectively. Under the excitation of 532 nm 38 ps pulse, it was found that the polymer with the side-chain of hydroxyl showed saturable absorption while the polymer with the side-chain of octoxy presented reverse saturable absorption. Their different nonlinear absorption behavior resulted from the fact that the ground-state absorption cross-section in the latter polymer was about 10 times larger than that of the former polymer while the excited-state absorption cross-section represented similar. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.