Mesoscale engineering of photonic glass for tunable luminescence

Yongze Yu,Chuansheng Ma,Guang Yang,Atsunobu Masuno,Jiri Orava,Zaijin Fang,Danping Chen,Shifeng Zhou,Jianrong Qiu,Shupei Zheng,Hiroyuki Inoue,Zhongmin Yang

doi:10.1038/am.2016.156

Abstract

Control of the optical behavior of active materials through manipulation of their microstructure has led to the development of high-performance photonic devices with enhanced integration density, improved quantum efficiencies and controllable color output. However, the achievement of robust light-harvesting materials with tunable, broadband and flattened emission remains a long-standing goal owing to the limited inhomogeneous broadening in ordinary hosts. Here, we describe an effective strategy for the management of photon emission by manipulating the mesoscale heterogeneities in optically active materials. Importantly, this unique approach enables control of dopant–dopant and dopant–host interactions on the extended mesoscale. This allows the generation of intriguing optical phenomena such as a high activation ratio of the dopant (close to 100%), dramatically inhomogeneous broadening (up to 480 nm), notable emission enhancement and, moreover, simultaneously extension of the emission bandwidth and flattening of the spectral shape in glass and fiber. Our results highlight that the findings connect the understanding of and manipulation in the mesoscale realm to functional behavior on the macroscale, and the approach to manage the dopants based on mesoscale engineering may provide new opportunities for the construction of a robust fiber light source. Manipulating the mesoscale structure enables broadband emission from glass and fibre optic cables. To produce compact light sources for applications such as broadband telecommunication and surgical microscopy, researchers are experimenting with glass and fibres with luminescent cores that are doped with transition-metal ions. Shifeng Zhou from the South China University of Technology and co-workers have discovered that medium-range interactions between dopants and their host matrix can significantly widen emitted wavelength ranges to give brighter, broader light sources. Applying mesoscale engineering approach for a tantalate glass system produced localized heterogeneous regions, which can isolate emission centres. The team demonstrated the potential of this pioneering strategy by constructing glass and optical fibre with tunable luminescent output, and extremely broad bandwidth up to ~480 nm which is the largest value ever reported in doped glass to date. A new principle for management of dopant–dopant and dopant–host interactions by manipulation of mesoscale heterogeneity in a single active material is presented. The proposed mesoscale engineering approach results in dramatically inhomogeneous broadening of dopant, and for the first time show success in simultaneously extending emission bandwidth and flattening spectral shape in a doped glass and fiber.

Highlights

Multicomponent glass fibers are considered the building blocks of the next-generation of fiber photonics because they hold promise for the realization of a compact light source in a wide spectral range, which can be used in advanced applications, such as high-capacity telecommunication and remote sensing and in the defense industry.[1,2,3]
We show that manipulating the mesoscale heterogeneities in a multiphase glass-ceramic fiber can result in significant inhomogeneous emission broadening beyond the 100 nm limit and, for the first time, in successful simultaneous extension of the emission bandwidth with a flattened spectral shape
Unlike the conventionally used approach, which has achieved only limited possibilities for tailoring the spectral broadening, the inhomogeneous mesoscale structure engineering protocol presented in this paper allows broadening of the emission bandwidth up to ~ 480 nm, that is, two times larger than that with the conventional approach, ~ 240 nm

Summary

Introduction

Multicomponent glass fibers are considered the building blocks of the next-generation of fiber photonics because they hold promise for the realization of a compact light source in a wide spectral range, which can be used in advanced applications, such as high-capacity telecommunication and remote sensing and in the defense industry.[1,2,3]The ultimate challenge in achieving these operational modes is to develop a glass fiber material capable of emitting in a wide wavelength range. This allows the generation of intriguing optical phenomena such as a high activation ratio of the dopant (close to 100%), dramatically inhomogeneous broadening (up to 480 nm), notable emission enhancement and, simultaneously extension of the emission bandwidth and flattening of the spectral shape in glass and fiber.

Results

Conclusion