Abstract

Ion implantation in silica has been shown to form photosensitive materials that can be used to form photoinduced gratings. The purpose of this work is to ascertain the photosensitivity of optically active defects in Se implanted silica. Se was chosen because of its chemical similarity to oxygen. The two sources of photosensitive responses in ion implanted glass are defects induced by the ionization and atom displacements during implantation and defects induced by the chemical reaction of the implanted ion species with the host. Silica was implanted with 4 MeV Se ions with nominal doses of 0.1 to 1.0 × 10¹⁶ ions/cm². Only bands at 5.85 and 5 eV are resolved in the absorption spectra in all samples. The bleaching of the bands with KrF irradiation is dose dependent. The sample implanted with 0.3 × 10¹⁶ ions/cm² an increase in the absorption at 5.85 eV and only a small decrease at 5 eV while the 1.0 × 10¹⁶ ions/cm² sample exhibits a decrease in absorption at 5.85 eV and a 33% decrease at 5 eV.

© 1997 Optical Society of America