New materials for laser and photonic technologies have been created

Researchers have activated lead chloride and tellurium dioxide glasses with rare earth metal ions.

A Russian-French-Czech research team has developed new methods for producing glasses with unique optical properties that will be in demand in medicine and electronics, particularly for laser production, according to the press service of the Russian Ministry of Education and Science. The researchers activated lead chloride and tellurium dioxide glasses with rare earth metal ions.

"The international team has developed new, unique phosphors based on glasses in the lead chloride-tellurium dioxide system, activated with rare earth metal ions. This research opens up new possibilities for the potential use of the developed glasses in the design of infrared materials and fiber optic devices for medicine and electronics (lasers, amplifiers)," the press service noted.

Tellurium dioxide-based glasses (tellurite glasses) are unique materials with nonlinear optical properties that are many times superior to silicate glasses. They possess chemical and thermal resistance, high infrared transparency, and electrical conductivity, making them popular in optics, electronics, and radiation shielding. They are produced by mixing tellurium dioxide with other metal oxides.

Rare Earth vs. Pyrohydrolysis

Many chemists would like to use lead chloride in the production of tellurite glasses. This offers considerable potential, but the synthesis of such "oxochloride" glasses is greatly hampered by their tendency to pyrohydrolysis (the decomposition of inorganic substances under the influence of water vapor), as well as the large number of residual hydroxyl groups that quench the luminescence.

Scientists from Russia, France, and the Czech Republic have synthesized and thoroughly studied the spectral and luminescent properties of a lead chloride-tellurium dioxide system doped with thulium, erbium, and holmium rare earth metal ions for the first time. By carefully selecting synthesis conditions using melt quenching, they were able to avoid lead chloride pyrohydrolysis and produce glasses with a low content of residual hydroxyl groups.

This study is the first to demonstrate luminescence in the 2-3 micrometer range for lead chloride-containing glasses. A comprehensive study of the synthesized oxochloride tellurite glasses doped with rare earth metal ions demonstrated their exceptional advantages for photonic technologies (medicine, electronics), compared to other types of glass.

Researchers from the Institute of General and Inorganic Chemistry (IGIIC) participated in the study. N. S. Kurnakov Institute of General and Inorganic Chemistry, Russian Academy of Sciences, D. I. Mendeleyev University of Chemical Technology of Russia, University of Caen Normandie (France), and Czech Technical University in Prague (Czech Republic). The study was supported by the Russian Ministry of Education and Science, and the results were published in the Journal of Non-Crystalline Solids.

Source: https://tass.ru/