Excimer VUV formation of erbium-doped silica layers

✍ Scribed by Yu, J. J. ;Boyd, I. W.

• Book ID: 105363264
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2005
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 162 KB
• Volume: 202
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0031-8965
• DOI: 10.1002/pssa.200510035

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

Erbium‐doped silica sol–gel layers with post‐process excimer VUV irradiation at a low temperature of 400 °C have exhibited a strong room temperature Er luminescence at ∼1.53 µm. The VUV irradiation has led to the formation of Er oxides in the silica matrix while significantly reducing nonradiative decay channels associated with the OH groups in the sol–gel layers. High‐resolution transmission electron micros‐copy results revealed the formation of Er~2~O~3~ crystallites in the silica layers. The Er–O coordination and crystallisation altered the chemical environment of the Er ions in the silica while possibly reducing the quenching effect of the Er–Er cross‐relaxation, resulting in the strong Er luminescence emitted. Moreover, the low temperature VUV process would not produce the luminescence background offset which was found to be present in all the luminescence spectra of the silica layers processed thermally at 900 °C. (© 2005 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)