Influence of the P2O5/Al2O3 co-doping on the local environment of erbium ions and on the 1.5 μm quantum efficiency of Er3+-borosilicate glasses

The changes in the Er3+ luminescence properties induced by the introduction of P2O5 and/or Al2O3 in borosilicate glasses with different SiO2 concentrations are discussed in this paper. The Judd-Ofelt theory was used to estimate the radiative and non-radiative rate of the transitions by calculating the so-called J-O fitting parameters Ω2, Ω4 and Ω6 from the absorption spectra. In this paper, we explained that the quantum efficiency of the glasses with 60 mol% of SiO2 is higher than that of the glasses with 50 mol% of SiO2. The formation of [AlPO4]-like units in the silica network leads to a slight reduction of the quantum efficiency. η is much higher for the P-rich glasses than for the Al-rich glass indicating that the P-rich glasses are the most promising materials for amplification application in silica-rich glasses.86