Rare-earth-doped oxide nanoparticles in the core of silica optical fibers are becoming well studied as they yield enhanced and tailorable spectroscopic and optical properties. In this paper, the evolution of particle morphology, induced by the drawing step, is studied. Indeed, during the fiber draw process, the glass flows and particles can elongate and even break-up into smaller particles through Rayleigh-Plateau instabilities. The shape of elongated particles is related to the composition as it depends on the viscosity ratio between the particle and the matrix. Moreover, a lower drawing temperature enhances the break-up phenomenon. These observations offer new possibilities for the control of the size and the shape of particles, hence performance of active optical fibers.
Rare-earth doped silica-based glasses lead the optical materials due to their tailorable spectroscopic and optical properties. In this context, we took advantage of the sol-gel process to prepare various Eu-doped silica glasses to study their luminescent properties before and after annealing at 900 °C. The effect of magnesium on these properties was studied in comparison with Mg-free-glass. Using TEM, nitrogen sorption, XRD and FT-IR, we confirmed that the magnesium modifies the glass structure and the thermal treatment eliminates the aqueous environment, modifying the structure ordering. The emission spectra and the decay time curves show the advantages of the Mg addition and the annealing on the photoluminescent properties.
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LaF3 is commonly added to oxide glass, in particular to silica, to form oxyfluoride glass. After appropriate thermal treatment at a temperature lower than 800 °C, usually, glass ceramics are obtained. Recently, LaF3 nanoparticles have been used as precursors to obtain amorphous nanoparticles of undefined composition in optical fiber. However, fiber fabrication necessitates temperature much higher (typically up to 2000 °C) than the one required for bulk glass. In this article, we report on the reactivity of fluoride ions in LaF3 with SiO2 and GeO2 (a common dopant used to dope optical fiber) powders at high temperature. TGA, EDX-SEM, XRD and Raman analyses were performed. Above 1000 °C, LaF3 starts to react, preferentially with SiO2, to form SiF4 gaseous species. The remaining lanthanum ions form La2Si2O7 and La2Ge2O7 phases. These results could contribute to improve material development for the fiber optics community.
HAL is a multidisciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.
Europium (Eu)-doped silica nanoparticles have attracted great interest for different applications, in particular in biomedicine as biosensors or for tissue regeneration. Sol-gel is the most common process used to prepare those particles, with size varying from tens to hundreds of nanometers. In this article, we focus our attention on the comparison between two commonly used sol-gel derived methods: reverse microemulsion (for particles smaller than 100 nm) and Stöber method (for particles larger than 100 nm). Europium concentration was varied between 0.2 and 1 mol%, and the nanoparticle diameters were 10, 50 and 100 nm. The link between the local environment of europium ions and their optical properties was investigated and discussed. Using Transmission Electron Microscopy, nitrogen sorption, X-ray diffraction, Fourier-Transform Infra-Red and pulsed doubled Nd:YAG laser, we confirmed that fluorescence lifetime was improved by thermal treatment at 900 °C due to the elimination of aqueous environment and modification of structure disorder. The size of nanoparticles, the amount of europium and the thermal treatment of obtained materials influence the emission spectra and the decay curves of Eu3+.
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