Optical characterisation of Er3+-doped oxyfluoride glasses and nano-glass-ceramics

•Optical properties of Er3+-doped oxyfluoride glasses and nano-glass-ceramics have been studied.•Third order nonlinear optical properties of Er3+-doped oxyfluoride glasses have been also studied using picosecond regimes.•Glasses for nonlinear optics.

We present the optical properties such as the linear refractive index (n), the absorption coefficient (α), the energy band gap (Eg) and the nonlinear refractive index (n2) measured by spectroscopy and degenerate four wave mixing methods for Er3+-doped oxyfluoride glasses and nano-glass-ceramics.The n2 of the Er3+-doped oxyfluoride nano-glass-ceramic is almost twice that of the Er3+-doped parent oxyfluoride glass and undoped oxyfluoride glass. The n2 values of the Er3+-doped oxyfluoride glass and non-Er3+-doped oxyfluoride glass are almost the same.