Porous glass doping by Er3+ for photonics applications

A novel way of fabrication of optical layers in glass, based on diffusion of erbium co-ordination compounds into silicate porous glass substrates is presented. Suitable erbium coordination compounds with large ligands dissolved in non-aqueous solvents were soaked into the porous silicate glass substrates. The doped samples were then heated to decompose the used erbium complexes and later were sintered at an even higher temperature. After the heat treatment the samples were analyzed by several methods to characterize the depth and homogeneity of the doping, the composition of the optical layers, and their emission at 1530 nm. The depths of the doped layers in the sintered samples varied from 60 to 650 mu m. Full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the emission bands at 1530 nm was up to 75 nm.