Time resolved photoluminescence associated with non-bridging oxygen hole centers in irradiated silica

We report time resolved photoluminescence spectra of irradiated silica under excitation with a laser tunable in the visible and UV range. The investigated samples exhibit the emission band at 1.9 eV associated with non-bridging oxygen hole centers, whose spectral and kinetics properties do not depend on the kind of irradiation (γ, β and neutrons). The 1.9 eV luminescence decay follows a multi-exponential curve with a characteristic lifetime that increases from 8.9 μs to 10.4 μs on increasing the emission energy. This dependence accounts for the blue-shift of the emission band during its decay and is interpreted as due to the inhomogeneous properties of silica leading to a distribution of kinetics features of this defect.