Transition metal doped chalcogenide glasses for broadband near-infrared sources

Abstract

The use of rare-earth ion dopants to obtain near-infrared (NIR) emission and lasing in glass fibres and waveguides is well known. However, due to the intrinsic nature of the spin-forbidden 4f-4f transitions the emission is generally only tuneable over a narrow spectral range (~50nm). The development of a broadband NIR source or tuneable laser would have applications in telecommunications, sensing amongst others. The ability to do this in a non-linear material would have additional benefits including the possibility of developing integrated devices. To this end we have investigated the incorporation of various transition metal dopants into Ga:La:S glass system (GLS). We have identified a number of transition metal ions that show potential for developing broadband source and in particular V. When V is incorporated into GLS strong room temperature emission is observed peaking at ~1550nm with what appears to be some dependence of the emission upon excitation at wavelength. The room temperature lifetime of the emission shows a non-exponential decay with a 1/e time of 31µs. The incorporation of Cr into GLS during the glass melting results in the formation of Cr ions that act as emitting centres. Again there appears to be some dependence on excitation wavelength of the emission which is ~1100nm when exciting at 800nm. The emission is also seen to shift upon cooling of the sample to 77K to longer wavelengths.

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Identifiers

ORCID for William Brocklesby: orcid.org/0000-0002-2123-6712

ORCID for D.W. Hewak: orcid.org/0000-0002-2093-5773

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