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VNU Journal of Science: Mathematics – Physics, Vol. 34, No. 1 (2018) 33-39 Sm3+ Doped Borotellurite Glass: Absorption, Fluorescence and Optical Parameters Phan Van Do* Thuy Loi University, 175 Tay Son, Dong Da, Hanoi, Vietnam Received 19 January 2018 Accepted 05 February 2018 Abstract: Borotellurite glasses doped with Sm3+ ions were prepared by a melt–quenching technique. The studies on optical characterization of Sm3+ ions have been carried out through absorption, emission and decay spectra. Judd-Ofelt (JO) intensity analysis has been presented and JO parameters were calculated for Sm3+ ions in borotellurite glasses. Radiative properties such as transition probabilities, branching ratios, radiative lifetime of 4G5/2 level and quantum efficiency were estimated by using JO parameters. Keywords: Borotellurite glasses, Judd-Ofelt theory. 1. Introduction Glasses doped with various rare earth ions are important materials for making fluorescent display devices, optical detectors, lasers, optical fibers, waveguides and fiber amplifiers [1-4]. Spectral properties of rare earth ions in glasses vary in a wide range depending on the chemical composition of glass former and modifier [3, 4]. Among lanthanides, the Sm3+ ion is one of the most interesting ions for analyzing the fluorescence properties because it is widely used in the fields such as undersea communications, high-density memories, colour displays and solid-state laser [2, 5-8]. Boric oxide (B2O3) is one of the representative glass former and flux material among the characteristic networks former [2]. Borate glasses have been extensively investigated due to intriguing properties such as good transparency in the infrared, low melting point, high solubility of rare earth [24, 8]. The disadvantage of these glasses is that high phonon energy (around 1300-1500 cm-1) results in strong occurrence of multi-phonon and reduces the luminescence efficiency of the material [3, 4, 6, 7]. The phonon energy of TeO2 is about 750 cm-1 [4]. Thus, when TeO2 is added to the borate glass, the phonon energy of the new glass would decrease significantly [2, 4]. This minimizes multi-phonon _______  Tel.: 84-983652242. Email: phanvando@tlu.edu.vn https//doi.org/ 10.25073/2588-1124/vnumap.4258 33 34 P.V. Do / VNU Journal of Science: Mathematics – Physics, Vol. 34, No. 1 (2018) 33-39 decay processes between energy levels which are very close to those of the lanthanide ions, and leading the increase in the quantum efficiency of the fluorescent processes. Due to the advantages of the telluro-borate glass as well as the technological importance of Sm3+ ions, the following composition is chosen to fabricate the studied samples: B2O3-TeO2-Na2OAl2O3:Sm2O3. The addition of the different types of metal oxides like Na2O, Li2O3. Al2O3 to binary telluro-borate glasses improves their chemical durability and alters their physico-chemical properties. Al2O has received significant consideration as the most likely useful matrix composition due to its high solubility of the RE3+ ions. Based on absorption and emission bands of intra-configurational f-f transitions in Sm3+, the optical parameters of Sm3+ have been evaluated by using the Judd-Ofelt (JO) theory [9, 10]. 2. Exprimental Sm3+ doped glasses with various compositions (65-x)B2O3+15TeO2+10Na2O+10Al2O3+ +xSm2O3, where x = 0.1; 0.5 and 1.0 mol% (denoted BTNA0.1, BTNA0.5 and BTNA1.0, respectively) were prepared by a conventional melt quenching technique. All the above weighed chemicals were wellmixed and heated for 60 min in a platinum crucible at 1300 oC in an electric furnace, then cooled quickly down to room temperature. The BTNA glasses were annealed at 350 oC for 12 h to eliminate mechanical and thermal stresses. The optical absorption spectra were measured between wavelengths 300 and 2000 nm using the Jascco V670 spectrometer. The photoluminescence spectra were recorded by the Fluorolog-3 spectrometer, model FL3-22, Horiba Jobin Yvon. Luminescence lifetime was measured using the Varian Cary Eclipse Fluorescence Spectrophotometer. All the measurements were carried out at room temperature. 3. Results and discussion 3.1. Absorption spectra Figure 1. The absorption spectra of BTNA:Sm3+ glasses: (a) in the range of UV-Vis and (b) in the range of NIR. P.V. Do / VNU Journal of Science: Mathematics – Physics, Vol. 34, No. 1 (2018) 33-39 35 The absorption spectra of BTNA:Sm3+ glass samples with some concentrations are shown in Fig.1a and Fig.1b for UV-Vis and NIR regions, respectively. There are 13 absorption bands appearing at the wavelengths of 1585, 1527, 1478, 1374, 1223, 1075, 944, 473, 439, 417, 402, 375 and 362 nm. These are the characteristic wavelengths in the absorption spectrum of Sm3+ ions, which are attributed to transitions from the 6H5/2 ground state to excited levels [11]. In NIR region, the transitions from 6 H5/2 to 6HJ and 6FJ are allowed by the spin selection rule (ΔS = 0), so the intensity of these transitions is often quite strong. The 6H5/2→6F1/2 and 6H5/2→6F3/2 transitions obey the selection rule |ΔJ| ≤ 2, |ΔS| = 0 and |ΔL| ≤ 2, thus these are hypersensitive transitions [9, 10]. Usually, the position, shape and intensity of hypersensitive transitions in RE3+ ions are very sensitive to the ligand coordination [9, 10]. However, there is not very big difference in hypersensitive transitions of the Sm3+ ion between hosts [2, 3, 5, 12]. In the UV-Vis regions, the various 2S+1LJ energy levels are very close to each other. Therefore, the absorption transitions are overlapped and that creates broad bands. The strongest intensity in this region corresponds to 6H5/2→6P3/2 transition (at the wavelength of 402 nm). This transition is a spin allowed transition which is normally used for fluorescence excitation. 3.2. Emission spectra Figure 2. The emission spectra of the BTNA:Sm3+ glasses. The emission spectra of the BTNA:Sm3+ glasses are recorded in the wavelength region 500-850 nm using the 402 nm excited wavelength and are shown in Fig.2. The emission spectra consists of 4 observed emission bands at wavelengths of 560, 600, 645 and 710 nm which correspond to the 4 G5/2→6HJ (J = 5/2, 7/2, 9/2, 11/2) transitions, respectively [11]. Among emission transitions, the 4 G5/2→6H7/2 transition has the most intense intensity whereas the 4G5/2→6H11/2 transition is very weak in intensity. Two emission bands with an average intensity corresponding to 4G5/2→6H5/2 and 4 G5/2→6H9/2 transitions which are usually used in high-density optical memory, color display and diagnostics in medicines [2, 6]. The 4G5/2→6H9/2 and 4G5/2→6H11/2 transitions are purely electric dipole (ED) transitions, whereas the 4G5/2→6H5/2 and 4G5/2→6H7/2 transitions include both electric and magnetic dipole (MD) transitions but the magnetic dipole is dominant mechanism in 4G5/2→6H7/2 transitions. Thus, the intensity of the 4G5/2→6H9/2 transition (red) strongly depends on the nature of ligand such as asymmetry and covalency of RE3+-ligand bond whereas the 4G5/2→6H7/2 transition (orange) is less dependent on those [2, 12]. Therefore, the intensity ratio O/R (orange/red) can be used P.V. Do / VNU Journal of Science: Mathematics – Physics, Vol. 34, No. 1 (2018) 33-39 36 to evaluate the characteristics of the local environment around the RE3+ ions [12, 13]. The O/R ratios increase slightly from 2.15 to 2.29 when the concentration of Sm3+ increases from 0.1 to 1,0 mol%. The small change of the these ratios indicates that the asymmetry of ligand and covalency of RE3+ligand bond nearly does not depend on the Sm3+ concentration. However, the values of the O/R ratios in BTNA glass are higher than those of the zinc potassium fluorophosphate (PKAMZF) and borotellurite (BTS) glasses [12, 13]. This indicates the asymmetry of crystal field at the RE3+ ions site and the covalency of RE3+-ligand bond for BTNA glass is lower in the PKAMZ and BTS glasses. 3.3. Optical parameters of Sm3+ ion in BTNA:Sm3+ glasses The Judd-Ofelt (JO) theory [9, 10] was seen to be useful to evaluate the radiative parameters of RE3+-doped solids, as well as RE-doped aqueous solutions. According to the JO theory, the electric dipole oscillator strength of a transition from the ground state to an excited state is given by: f cal  8 2 mc (n 2  2) 2 3h(2 J  1) 9n  U    ( ) 2 (1)  2, 4, 6 where n is the refractive index of the material, J is the total angular momentum of the ground state, 2 Ωλ are the JO intensity parameters and U (  ) are the squared doubly reduced matrix of the unit tensor operator of the rank λ = 2, 4, 6, which are calculated from intermediate coupling approximation for a transition J   ' J ' . These reduced matrix elements are nearly independent of host matrix as mentioned in earlier studies [11]. On the other hand, the experimental oscillator strengths, fexp, of the absorption bands are experimentally determined using the following formula [2, 5]: f exp  4.318 10 9   ( )d (2) where α is molar extinction coefficient at energy ν (cm ). The α(ν) values can be calculated from absorbance A by using Lambert–Beer’s law A = α(ν)cd (3) 3+ -3 3 where c is RE concentration [dim: L ; units: mol/dm ], d is the optical path length [dim: L; units: cm]. By equating the measured and calculated values of the oscillator strength (fcal and fexxp) and solving the system of equations by the method of least squares, the JO intensities parameters Ω λ (λ = 2,4 and 6) can be evaluated numerically. The calculated results Ωλ (×10-20 cm2) for BTNA:Sm3+ are shown in Table 1. Ω4/Ω6 ratio (χ) is called as the spectroscopic quality factor that it is important to characterize the quality of optical materials [5]. The values of χ in BTNA:Sm3+ is large and comparable to the Sm3+-doped other hosts [6-8]. This suggests that the BTNA:Sm3+ crystal is a good optical material. -1 Table 1. The intensity parameters Ωλ of BTNA:Sm3+ glasses. Ω2 (10-20 cm2) Ω4 (10-20 cm2) Ω6 (10-20 cm2) Ω4/Ω6 0.1 mol% 2.95 10.99 5.26 2.08 0.5 mol% 2.88 10.88 4.74 2.29 1.0 mol% 2.45 10.27 5.68 1.81 P.V. Do / VNU Journal of Science: Mathematics – Physics, Vol. 34, No. 1 (2018) 33-39 37 To understand the lasing and optical amplifier potentialities of a material, the JO theory has been to determine radiative properties such as: branching ratios (βexp and βcal, %), effective line width (Δλeff, nm), stimulated emission cross-section (σ(λP), 10-22 cm) and gain bandwidth (σ×Δλeff, 10-28 m3). The detail formulas for these parameters have been given in previous reports [2, 5]. The experimental branching ratios (βexp) are obtained by using the relative intensities of individual peaks to that of the total intensity of emission peaks. A radiative transition has potential for laser emission if the experimental branching ratios are higher 50 % [5]. For BTNA:Sm3+ samples, the βexp values of 4 G5/2→6H7/2 transition are 53.5, 54.6 and 53.2 % for concentrations of 0.1, 0.5 and 1.0 mol% Sm3+, respectively. These values are comparable to those in literature [5, 6-8]. Thus, the 4 G5/2→6H7/2 transition of Sm3+ in BTNA glasses has a promising potential for optical applications. Table 2 shows some radiative parameters of 4G5/2→6H7/2 transition in Sm3+ ion. The stimulated emission cross-section - σ(λP) is an important parameter which has been used to identify the potential laser transition of rare earth ions in glasses. The values of stimulated emission cross-section are in good agreement with those reported for the other glass hosts [6-8]. The relatively large values of βexp and σ(λP) make BTNA:Sm3+ glasses as promising materials for lasing action through the emission channel 4G5/2 → 6H7/2 transition. From Table 2, it is clear that among all prepared samples, the BTNA:0.5Sm3+ sample possesses larger values of βexp and σ(λP) than other samples. Hence the BTNA:0.5Sm3+ glass can be recommended as a good host for lasing emission at 600 nm. used Table 2. Radiative parameters of 4G5/2→6H7/2 transition in Sm3+ ion βcal βexp Δλeff σ(λP) σ(λP)×Δλeff 0.1 mol% 0.5 mol% 1.0 mol% 55.3 53.5 14.2 13.2 18.7 57.6 54.6 13.1 15.3 20.2 56.4 53.2 13.8 14,2 19.6 3.4. Fluorescence decay Figure 3. Luminescence decay profiles of the 4G5/2 of Sm3+ ions in BTNA glass. P.V. Do / VNU Journal of Science: Mathematics – Physics, Vol. 34, No. 1 (2018) 33-39 38 The fluorescence decay curves for the 4G5/2 level of Sm3+ ions for different concentrations in BTNA:Sm3+ glass with an excitation wavelength of 402 nm are shown in Fig.3. The measured lifetimes (τexp) of samples have been determined by the formula [2, 5]  exp   tI (t )dt  I (t )dt (4) The measured lifetime of 4G5/2 level are 1.702, 1.301 and 0.689 ms for BTNA:0.1Sm3+, BTNA:0.5Sm3+ and BTNA:1.0Sm3+ samples, respectively. The lifetime decreases with the increase of the Sm3+ concentration. The decrease of lifetime can be related to the concentration quenching mechanism [2, 5, 8]. The lifetime obtained from JO theory (τcal) are 1.895, 1.757 and 1.879 ms for BTNA:0.1Sm3+, BTNA:0.5Sm3+ and BTNA:1.0Sm3+ samples, respectively. With a certain concentration, the τexp is smaller than the τcal. The discrepancy between the measured and calculated lifetime may be due to the nonradiative transfer processes which consists multi-phonon relaxation and energy transfer through cross-relaxation between the pairs of Sm3+ ions and the migration of the excitation energy [5-8]. The luminescence quantum efficiency of the fluorescent level is defined by the ratio of the measured lifetime to the calculated lifetime by JO theory [5, 6]: η = τmes/τcal. The quantum efficiency for BTNA:0.1Sm3+, BTNA:0.5Sm3+ and BTNA:1.0Sm3+ samples are 89.82, 74.05 and 56.67 %, respectively. The large values of quantum efficiency show the ability to use BTNA:Sm3+ glasses for optical amplifier. It is found that the quantum efficiency decreases with increase of concentration of Sm3+ ions. In addition, the decay curve is the single exponential with concentration of 0.1 mol% and becomes non-exponential with the higher concentrations (0,5 and 1,0 mol%). The causes of these phenomenons is due to the increase of energy transfer rate with increase of Sm3+ concentration [2, 5, 8]. 4. Conclusions The optical properties of Sm3+-doped borotellurite glasses have been investigated. By using JO theory, the radiative properties such as branching ratios and the stimulated emission cross-section have been predicted. The large values of the branching ratios, the stimulated emission cross-section and quantum efficiency show that BTNA:Sm3+ glass is the promising materials for lasing action and optical amplifier through the emission channel 4G5/2 → 6H7/2 transition Acknowledgments This research is funded by Vietnam's National Foundation for Science and Technology Development (NAFOSTED) under Grant number 103.03-2017.352. References [1] Vu Phi Tuyen., Bounyavong Sengthong., Vu Xuan Quang., Phan Van Do., Ho Van Tuyen., Le Xuan Hung., Nguyen Trong Thanh., Masayuki Nogami., Tomokatsu Hayakawa., Bui The Huy, J. Lumin 178 (2016) 27–33. [2] Phan Van Do.,Vu Phi Tuyen., Vu Xuan Quang., Le Xuan Hung., Luong Duy Thanh.,, Tran Ngoc., Ngo Van Tam., Bui The Huy, Opt. Mater 55 (2016) 62–67. [3] S. Arunkumar., K. Venkata Krishnaiah., K. Marimuthu, Physica B 416 (2013) 88–100 P.V. 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