Luminescent properties of Er3+-doped La2O3–Ga2O3 glass prepared by aerodynamic levitation technique

Although silicon photonics has made great progress, there are still challenges to realization of modules or devices such as integrated light sources and amplifiers because of the indirect band gap nature of silicon. In this paper, we report a high concentration Er3+-doped La2O3–Ga2O3 glass for Er3+-doped waveguide amplifier (EDWA). The results show the xEr2O3–44La2O3-(56-x)Ga2O3 glasses prepared by the aerodynamic levitation (ADL) technique have high glass transition temperatures (Tg > 1000 K) and microhardness (HV ≥ 6.9 GPa), which means the glasses have high thermal stability and damage resistance. The Er3+ concentration in Er2O3–44La2O3-55Ga2O3 glass is as high as ~2.5 × 1020 cm−3, and the luminous intensity at NIR (~1550 nm) is ~10–100 times that of up-conversion and MIR. The small branching ratio β of the 4I11/2 → 4I13/2 transition (20.1 %), large radiative transition probabilities Arad for 4I13/2 → 4I15/2 transition (190.39 s−1), and low temperature sensitivity of luminescence make the glass an idea material for EDWA using in NIR band.