Abstract

Higher concentrations of rare earth (RE) ions in glass materials would be favorable for the output of single-frequency fiber lasers. In this Letter, we adjusted the topological structure of glass networks through controlling the numbers of non-bridging oxygens (NBOs) and bridging oxygens (BOs) by tuning the composition of the glasses, hence increasing the RE doping concentration of germanosilicate glasses. The increased flexibility of the glass networks favors the distribution of clusters of RE ions to decrease fluorescence quenching, which was validated by both our experimental and theoretical results. To the best of our knowledge, for the first time, a highly ${\mathrm{Er}}^{3+}$-doped (up to 7 mol. %) heavy metal oxide glass was fabricated without quenching by tuning the components of the glass. In addition, we have demonstrated an approach to enhance the fluorescence properties of heavily RE-doped glass materials by tailoring network topology.

© 2018 Optical Society of America

Controllable structural tailoring for enhanced ∼2 µm emission in heavily Tm³⁺-doped germanate glasses

Le Tu, Guowu Tang, Qi Qian, and Zhongmin Yang
Opt. Lett. 46(2) 310-313 (2021)

Enhanced UC and IR luminescence properties regulated by tight network structure in multicomponent glasses

Guangyu Ren, Benle Dou, Youjie Hua, Feifei Huang, Yinyan Li, Junjie Zhang, and Shiqing Xu
Opt. Lett. 44(18) 4515-4518 (2019)

Heavily Tb³⁺ doped multi-component phosphate glass fibers for green fiber lasers

Guowu Tang, Guoquan Qian, Zhenguo Shi, Yu Liu, Bowen Huang, Yongcheng He, Licheng Jiang, Min Sun, Qi Qian, and Zhongmin Yang
Opt. Mater. Express 9(2) 362-372 (2019)

Broadening and enhancing 2.7  μm emission spectra in Er/Ho co-doped oxyfluoride germanosilicate glass ceramics by imparting multiple local structures to rare earth ions

Qunhuo Liu, Ying Tian, Wenhua Tang, Feifei Huang, Xufeng Jing, Junjie Zhang, and Shiqing Xu
Photon. Res. 6(4) 339-345 (2018)

Unusual thermal response of tellurium near-infrared luminescence in phosphate laser glass

Linling Tan, John C. Mauro, Shanhui Xu, Zhongmin Yang, and Mingying Peng
Opt. Lett. 43(19) 4823-4826 (2018)