Abstract
Rare-earth doped oxyfluoride glass ceramics represent a new generation of tailorable optical materials with high potential for optical-related applications such as optical amplifiers, optical waveguides, and white LEDs. Their key features are related to the high transparency and remarkable luminescence properties, while keeping the thermal and chemical advantages of oxide glasses. Sol-gel chemistry offers a flexible synthesis approach with several advantages, such as lower processing temperature, the ability to control the purity and homogeneity of the final materials on a molecular level, and the large compositional flexibility. The review will be focused on optical properties of sol-gel derived nano-glass ceramics related to the RE-doped luminescent nanocrystals (fluorides, chlorides, oxychlorides, etc.) such as photoluminescence, up-conversion luminescence, thermoluminescence and how these properties are influenced by their specific processing, mostly focusing on the findings from our group and similar ones in the literature, along with a discussion of perspectives, potential challenges, and future development directions.
Highlights
Glass ceramics are inorganic, non-metallic materials prepared by controlled crystallization of precursor glasses with at least one type of functional crystalline phase, that may vary from ppm to almost 100% is embedded in residual glass [1]
Nucleation and growth of fluoride nanocrystals occurs in the glass matrix during heat treatment and rare earth ions can preferentially segregate into the fluoride nanocrystals
Most of the sol-gel derived oxyfluoride glass ceramic materials studied have a simple composition according to the formula: (100 − x) SiO2-xM1F2/M2F3/M1M2F4, where M1 and M2 are alkaline, alkaline-earth metals, or lanthanide elements, respectively [4]
Summary
Non-metallic materials prepared by controlled crystallization of precursor glasses with at least one type of functional crystalline phase, that may vary from ppm to almost 100% is embedded in residual glass [1]. Transparent oxyfluoride nano-glass ceramics are produced by fluoride nanocrystals precipitation in a silica glass matrix during a controlled thermal processing. They have shown a high potential for applications in various devices (optical amplifiers, optical waveguides, white LEDs, etc.) since they combine the optical phenomena with optical transparency due to lack of scattering. This review is focused on luminescence properties of sol-gel derived nano-glass ceramics related to the RE-doped luminescent nanocrystals (fluorides, chlorides, oxychlorides, etc.) such as photoluminescence, up-conversion luminescence, thermoluminescence and how these properties are influenced by thermal processing, focusing on the findings from our group and similar ones in the literature of the past decade, along with a discussion of the future perspectives, potential challenges, and future development directions
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