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

In this work, the glass 42AO-7Nb 2 O 5 -21Ga 2 O 3 –29SiO 2 -1Sm 2 O 3 (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 4G 5/2 → 6H 7/2 transition, with σ em = 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. [Display omitted] • A novel glass 42AO-7Nb 2 O 5 -21Ga 2 O 3 –29SiO 2 -1Sm 2 O 3 (A = Ca,Sr,Ba) was prepared. • The influence of network modifier's cation radius on the wave number of Raman peak is small, but the peak intensity increases with the increase of cation radius. • Sm3+ ions doped gallium silicate glasses has prospective applications in solid state orange lasers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]