Abstract

Background: Recently, great importance has been devoted to borate glass systems doped with rare-earth ions because of their unique peculiar properties in the field of photonics for optical applications.

Objective: The purpose of the present study is to investigate the effect of concentration of Sm3+ ions on the luminescence properties of lead fluoroborate glasses through the energy transfer mechanism.

Materials and Methods: Samarium doped lead fluoroborate glasses with chemical composition 20PbF2 .10Li2O .5SrO .5ZnO. (60-x) B2O3. xSm2O3 (where x = 0.1, 0.5, 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 mol %) were prepared by means of melt quenching method. The concentration dependent luminescence properties were investigated in detail from the optical absorption, photoluminescence and decay analysis. Judd-Ofelt (J-O) theory was applied to analyze the optical absorption spectra. The experimental oscillator strengths of absorption bands have been used to determine the J-O parameters. Using the J-O parameters Ωλ (λ = 2, 4 and 6) and luminescence data several radiative parameters were obtained.

Results: From the luminescence spectra, it was noticed that luminescence quenching starts at higher concentrations of Sm3+ ions (x ≥ 0.5 mol %). The decay curves of 4G5/2 → 6H7/2 transition exhibit a single exponential at lower dopant concentrations (x = 0.1 and 0.5 mol %) and non-exponential at higher concentrations (x ≥ 1 mol %). The concentration quenching was attributed to the energy transfer through the cross-relaxation between Sm3+ ions. The non-exponential curves were well fitted to Inokuti-Hirayama model for S = 6, indicating that the energy transfer between Sm3+ - Sm3+ ions is of dipole-dipole type. The calculated color coordinates of the as-prepared glasses fall within the reddish-orange region of the CIE diagram.

Conclusion: All the experimental results indicate that the 0.5 mol% Sm3+ ions doped LLSZFB glass can be a possible choice for solid state lighting and display applications.

Keywords: Energy transfer, fluoroborate glass, melt quenching, optical absorption, photoluminescence, Sm3+ ions.