Temporal Characteristics of Afterglow in Artificial Opal

Abstract

We report the results of an experimental study of the temporal response of the artificial opal luminescence excited by UV pulses from a nitrogen laser at room temperature, liquid-nitrogen temperature, and in the intermediate range. While the response time does not exceed 15 ns at room temperature, the afterglow at liquid-nitrogen temperature was detected with a decay time of about 700 ms. We have revealed that the afterglow appears suddenly with just millisecondrange duration at a definite temperature of 130 ± 5 K. The temperature dependence of the afterglow is of importance for the explanation of surprising effects of the stimulated emission in a single nano-sized SiO2 globule and the second harmonic generation in the material at liquid-nitrogen temperature. K e y w o r d s: artificial opal, afterglow, nanocavity lasing.

Observation of room-temperature afterglow in Polyamide-6 under UV excitation

“…In addition, we note the afterglow effect is very common not only for polymer materials but also for amorphous materials of very different nature, e.g., inorganic synthetic opal [8] or organic natural cellulose [9].…”