High amount of gold nanoparticles was successfully incorporated into amorphous BaTiO3 thin films by sol-gel process. Thiourea was applied to prevent Au ions from being reduced and aggregating as the effective stabilization agents. These films exhibited unique surface plasma resonance red-shifting and particular changes of surface plasma resonance intensity with the increase of heat-treating temperature, which could be attributed to the influence of BaTiO3 ferroelectric domains. The films also exhibited superfast nonlinear optical response and larger third-order nonlinear susceptibility chi((3)), which was attributed to hot electron contribution. (C) 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers.