Optical response and magnetic characteristic of samarium doped zinc phosphate glasses containing nickel nanoparticles

•Sm3+ doped zinc phosphate glass embedded with Ni NPs has been prepared.•The Laue pattern and lattice spacing of Ni NPs are confirmed by HRTEM image.•The magnetic response of glasses has been studied through VSM analysis.•Enhancement factor and decay half-lifetime are investigated.

A magnetic glass of composition 40ZnO–(58−x) P2O5–1Sm2O3–xNiO, with x=0.0, 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 mol% is prepared by melt-quenching technique. The glass is characterized by X-ray diffraction, high-resolution transmission electron microscope (HRTEM), photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy and vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM) analysis. The X-rays diffraction confirms the amorphous nature of the glass while the HRTEM analysis reveals the presence of nickel nanoparticles in the glass samples. High-resolution TEM reveals that the lattice spacing of nickel nanoparticles is 0.35 nm at (100) plane. Photoluminescence emission shows the existence of four peaks that correspond to the transition from the upper level of 4G5/2 to the lower level of 6H5/2, 6H7/2, 6H9/2, and 6H11/2. It is observed that all peaks experience significant quenching effect with the increasing concentration of nickel nanoparticles, suggesting a strong energy transfer from excited samarium ions to the nickel ions. The glass magnetization and susceptibility at 12 kOe at room temperature are found to be in the range of (3.87±0.17×10−2–7.19±0.39×10−2) emu/g and (3.24±0.16×10−6–5.99±0.29×10−6) emu/Oe g respectively. The obtained hysteresis curve indicates that the glass samples are paramagnetic materials. The studied glass can be further used towards the development of magneto-optical functional glass.