The sodium borosilicate glass containing Bi 2 S 3 nanocrystals is prepared by employing both sol–gel and atmosphere control methods. The third-order nonlinear optical absorption of the glass is investigated in detail using the open-aperture Z-scan technique at the wavelength of 770nm with a pulse width of 200fs. The results show that the transformation from saturable absorption to reverse saturable absorption in the glass is observed with the increase of the input light intensity of the laser used. The mechanism of the third-order nonlinear optical absorption is discussed preliminarily in the glass. Meanwhile, XRD, XPS, TEM, (S)TEM, EDAX, HRTEM, and SAED are used to characterize the microstructures of the glass.