Photoluminescence analysis of Er³⁺-ions Doped P<inf>2</inf>O<inf>5</inf>-Gd<inf>2</inf>O<inf>3</inf>/GdF<inf>3</inf>-BaO-ZnO glass systems

Abstract

We develop two Er3+-ions-doped Phosphate glass systems, 69 P2O5-10Gd2O3-10BaO-10ZnO-1Er2O3 and 69 P2O5-10GdF3-10BaO-10ZnO-1Er2O3, labeled as ZBaFEr and ZBaOEr, respectively, by the melt-quenching technique and study systematically their physical, optical, and luminescence properties such as densities, refractive indexes, ultraviolet-visible near-infrared (UV-Vis-NIR) absorption, photoluminescence spectra in Vis-NIR region, CIE coordinates and lifetime. The absorption spectra revealed the Er3+ peaks at 378, 405, 451, 489, 522, 652, 803, 978, and 1537 nm, attributed to the transition from 4I15/2 level to 4G11/2, 2G9/2, 4F5/2, 4F7/2, 2H11/2, 4F9/2, 4I9/2, 4I11/2 and 4I13/2 levels, respectively. We find that at 380-nm excitation, the emission peak at 1543 nm in the near-infra-red (NIR) region has a higher intensity for ZBaFEr than for the ZBaOEr. Furthermore, we employ the Judd-Ofelt (JO) and McCumber theory to study the stimulated emission cross-section for 4I13/2→4 I15/2 transitions of Er3+ ion. We find the bandwidth-quality [FWHM x σemi(λ)] to be 249 and 274 for ZBaOEr and ZBaFEr, respectively. The NIR-emission for both glasses covers the S-, C- and L-band of low-less-communication-window. The present results suggest that these glasses can be potentially used in optical amplifiers and tunable lasers.