Investigation of optical and luminescence properties of Eu3+ doped borate glasses for photonic applications

Nowadays the design and development of rare earth ion doped glass materials have come into prominence due to important application areas such as solid-state lasers, optic detectors, light emitting diodes (LED), color displays, solar cells. Research focus on the materials which have required optimum structural, optical and luminescence features for the advancing photonics technologies have been gradually increase. Among the rare earth ions doped glasses europium doped ones are the most suitable materials for optical devices due to their simple energy level structure, narrow emission band, sensitive red emission and longer decay times. In this study, borate (B2O3) glasses which are member of oxide glass family were chosen as host matrix depending on their strong glass forming ability, ease of shaping, high transparency, and high rare earth ion solution capacity. With the addition of Bi2O3, Al2O3 and Li2O the glass materials with composition of (65-x)B2O3-10Bi2O3-15Li2O-10Al2O3-xEu2O3 (% mol) have been synthesized by melt quenching method. The structural, optical and luminescence properties of studied materials were determined by X-ray diffraction, Fourier Transformed Infrared, absorption, transmission, photoluminescence, decay time and color coordinate measurements. Based on Judd-Ofelt theory, radiative properties including transition probabilities, radiative decay times, branching ratio and emission cross section were calculated. The utility of the titled materials in photonics application such as red LED and red lasers was investigated.