Analysis of red-luminescence lifetime components of non-bridging oxygen hole centers in γ-ray irradiated silica glasses

Abstract

The relation between 1.9 eV red-luminescence intensity of non-bridging oxygen hole centers (NBOHCs) in silica and incident laser shot number was proved to be important to predict the occurrence of laser damage, in which a more precise prediction will benefit from a deeply understanding of the red-luminescence of NBOHCs. This study focuses on analyzing NBOHCs in silica glasses irradiated by gamma rays, including the electron paramagnetic resonance spectra in the main g2 factor range, excitation spectra in the UV range, emission spectra and emission lifetimes in the red range, as well as their relations with hydroxyl and temperature. At 53 K, the main g2-factor of NBOHCs in high-hydroxyl (high-OH) and low-hydroxyl (low-OH) silica differs by only ∼1.5 × 10−4. Whereas in the higher g-value side of the main g2-factor band, low-OH silica exhibited a little broadened resonance absorption bandwidth. At room temperature, the 5.64-3.44 eV excitation spectra monitoring at 1.9 eV and the 2.16-1.65 eV emission spectra exciting at 4.8 eV exhibit the same excitation peak of 4.54 eV and emission peak of 1.907 eV for both high-OH and low-OH silica. Whereas at liquid-N2 temperature, high-OH silica exhibits a broader emission bandwidth in the higher energy side of the red-luminescence band. At room temperature, the average emission lifetime of NBOHC in high-OH silica is 14.5 µs, whereas that in low-OH silica is 13.4 µs. However, at liquid-N2 temperature, their average lifetimes respectively increased and decreased greatly to 22.3 and 9.7 µs, showing a quite obvious variation. In high-OH silica, the large number of hydroxyl attract the hydrogen ions that are released with the temperature decrease, forming metastable hydrogen-bonded hydroxyl. Finally, only NBOHCs corresponding to longer lifetime components, without neighboring hydrogen and its interaction, remain in the high-OH silica at lower temperature. In low-OH silica, there is few hydroxyl, so that the hydrogen released with the temperature decrease can only act on NBOHCs without neighboring hydrogen. Finally, those NBOHCs that correspond to shorter lifetime components and interact with neighboring hydrogen remain in the low-OH silica at lower temperature. The results on the characteristics of this red luminescence provides new ideas and ways for the future prediction about the laser damage of silica. Especially, the component analysis on the emission lifetime decay curves that can reflect the characteristics of NBOHCs and their neighboring environment can not only be used to distinguish between contributions to the red-luminescence from different types of NBOHCs, but also to analyze the relations between other ions or defects around NBOHCs and laser damage initiation, for a more precise prediction.