Effect of network modifiers on spectroscopic properties of Sm3+ ions doped gallium silicate glasses

Abstract

In this work, the glass 42AO-7Nb2O5-21Ga2O3–29SiO2-1Sm2O3(A = Ca,Sr,Ba) are prepared by the conventional melt quenching technique. The effects of modifiers on the glass network structure and luminescence properties were investigated by XRD, Raman spectroscopy, spectrophotometry, and J-O theory, respectively. The J-O intensity parameters which were calculated though the absorption spectra were used to evaluate the laser parameters such as the radiative excursion probability of Sm3+ ions in different samples at each energy level, the emission cross section, the radiative lifetime, and the optical gain parameter. When BaO is used as a network modifier, the emission cross section is maximized at the 4G5/2 → 6H7/2 transition, with σem = 9.47 × 10−22 cm2. The experiments results reveal that altering the network modifier can effectively improves the laser emission performance of the samples, and the Sm3+ ions doped gallium silicate glasses has prospective applications in solid state orange lasers.