Tailoring the Glass Composition to Increase the Thermal Stability without Impacting the Crystallization Behavior of Oxyfluorophosphate Glass

Nirajan Ojha,Wilfried Blanc,Iuliia Dmitrieva,Laeticia Petit

doi:10.3390/ceramics4020013

Abstract

Even though the (75 NaPO3-25 CaF2) (in mol%) glass can be heat-treated into transparent glass-ceramic with Er3+ doped CaF2 crystals precipitating in the volume of the glass during heat-treatment, this glass was found to be a poor glass former, limiting its use as upconverter under 975 nm pumping. In this study, the impact of the glass composition on the thermal, optical and structural properties of the glass was investigated in order to understand how the glass composition can be tailored for the development of thermally stable upconverter glass-based material. The addition of MgO, Fe2O3 and Al2O3 in the NaPO3-CaF2 glass system increases the thermal stability of glass due to the depolymerization of the glass network. However, the changes in the glass composition also impacted on the nucleation and growth process. Indeed, CaF2 and other crystals were found in the newly developed glasses after heat-treatment leading to glass-ceramics with lower intensity of upconversion than the (75 NaPO3-25 CaF2) glass-ceramic used as a reference. Glasses were also prepared with different concentrations of Er2O3 and ErF3. These glasses were found to be promising as not only are they thermally stable, but they also exhibit green and red emission with high intensity under 975 nm pumping due to Er3+ clustering.

Highlights

The goal of this study is to understand how to tailor the glass composition in order to increase the thermal stability of the glass without modifying the volume precipitation of Er3+ doped CaF2 crystals inside the glass during heat-treatment, and so its upconversion property
The changes in the glass composition were too little to impact the thermal stability of the glasses
Novel Er3+ doped oxyfluorophosphate glasses in the NaPO3 -CaF2 system were prepared with various amounts of MgO, Fe2 O3, Al2 O3, Er2 O3 and ErF3 in order to prepare thermally stable glasses which can be heat-treated into glass-ceramic with strong visible upconversion under 975 nm pumping

Summary

Introduction

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Oxyfluorophosphate glasses have been gaining interest in recent years due to the combined properties of oxides and fluorides. These glasses possess low phonon energy and they allow high solubility of rare-earth (RE) ions as RE clustering occurs at very high. The composition of the oxyfluorophosphate glasses can be tailored so that the glasses can be engineered with good chemical durability and thermal stability [2]

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