Specially pure glass for optics and photonics has been created in Russia

Particularly pure tellurite glasses for optics and photonics were created by scientists from Nizhny Novgorod State University. Lobachevsky. According to the authors of the development, the resulting new materials have unique properties and will be widely used in various fields of science and technology, for example, for the manufacture of lasers, optical amplifiers and filters. The study results were published in Inorganic Chemistry Communications.

When producing tellurite glasses, an important step is the purification of the initial components from atoms of transition elements and “water”. At the National Research Nizhny Novgorod State University named after N.I. Lobachevsky, a method has been developed that makes it possible to obtain high-purity compounds with a low content of these impurities. These compounds were used to obtain especially pure tellurite glasses by co-melting them with further quenching of the melt.

At each stage, scientists controlled the purity using special methods. As the members of the scientific group explained, the obtained samples were examined by X-ray phase analysis to determine the presence of glassy and crystalline phases. Using differential scanning calorimetry, the thermal properties of glasses were described, and optical spectroscopy made it possible to characterize their transparency over a wide range of wavelengths.

“Carrying out research within the framework of the Russian Science Foundation project, we managed to achieve a significant reduction in the negative impact of impurities of various natures due to the developed method for purifying the starting substances. This made it possible to significantly increase the transparency of the studied glasses in the visible and near-infrared regions of the spectrum,” noted the project leader, associate professor of the department of inorganic Chemistry Faculty of Chemistry, Nizhny Novgorod State University. N.I. Lobachevsky Oleg Zamyatin.

At the same time, he added that the scientific group also carried out a lot of work to study the behavior of atoms of transition elements (copper, iron, nickel, chromium, etc.) in the matrix of tellurite glasses and obtained fundamental information regarding their electronic structure and absorption coefficients.

© Photo: Oleg Zamyatin

Tellurite glass samples

According to Zamyatin, the studied tellurite glasses are significantly superior to other classes of compounds in certain parameters and in the near future can be used as an alternative to quartz and fluoride glasses.

“The achieved reduction in impurity influence makes it possible to create various functional materials based on tellurite glasses: from fiber light guides for transmitting information over long distances to broadband amplifiers and lasers operating in the near-infrared range,” the scientist emphasized.

Currently, chemists are developing a method for manufacturing fiber light guides based on tellurite glasses with low optical losses. In addition, according to UNN researchers, they intend to obtain doped glasses in order to generate radiation from ions of rare earth elements to create fiber lasers.

Source: ria.ru