Infrared and visible spectroscopic studies of the ytterbium doped borate Li6Y(BO3)3

The spectroscopic study of trivalent ytterbium doped Li6Y(BO3)3 is conducted in the UV–visible and infrared range. An excitation in the charge transfer band of ytterbium has been selected in order to reduce the reabsorption effect on the IR emission intensity. The maximum of the emission is located at 972 nm for an excitation at 230 nm. The energy level assignment has been successfully conducted using vibrational spectroscopy to distinguish the pure electronic transitions from the phonon-assisted ones. The splitting of the 2F5/2 and 2F7/2 components is equal to 523 cm−1 and 676 cm−1, respectively. The decay time dependence as a function of the concentration is also reported. The calculated value τrad is about (1.03 ± 0.01) ms for the 1% doped material. For the highest concentration, an IR excitation gives rise to the observation of a blue-green luminescence caused by two mechanisms: an erbium emission at 550 nm after upconversion and a cooperative luminescence of ytterbium ions.