Thermal lens study of thermo-optical properties and concentration quenching of Er3+-doped lead pyrophosphate-based glasses

In this work, we have used the thermal lens technique combined with conventional spectroscopy to characterize the thermo-optical properties of Er3+-doped lead pyrophosphate-based glasses. More precisely, we have investigated and quantified experimentally the fluorescence quantum efficiencies of the Er3+ levels, and we describe the role of concentration quenching effects. The fluorescence quantum efficiency of the I-4(13/2) level is very high when compared to other phosphate glasses, while that of the green-coupled levels is very small. Other important photonic materials parameters, such as the thermal diffusivity and temperature coefficient of the optical path length change, were obtained and compared with those of other glass systems. The cumulative results obtained here for the Er-doped lead pyrophosphate glass show that this material is a good candidate for photonic applications with a characteristic Er3+ infrared emission around 1550 nm. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4729295]