Enhanced 2 μm broad-band emission and NIR to visible frequency up-conversion from Ho3+/Yb3+ co-doped Bi2O3-GeO2-ZnO glasses.

In this work, a new and non-conventional oxide glass composition based on Bi2O3-GeO2-ZnO system has been formulated with an aim to realize low phonon oxide glass and elucidate its performance when co-doped with Ho(3+)/Yb(3+) for the energy transfer based NIR emission at 2 μm from Ho(3+) ions under Yb(3+) excitation. The glass with 1.0 mol% Ho2O3 and 0.5 mol% Yb2O3 has exhibited maximum energy transfer rate (3602 s(-1)) and energy transfer efficiency (65.92%). Important radiative properties have been predicted for emission transitions of Ho(3+) ions using intensity parameters derived from measured absorption spectra using standard Judd-Ofelt theory. At lower acceptor ion concentration (0.1 mol%), an efficient NIR to visible up-conversion emission has been observed based on two photon absorption process which has found to be reduced significantly at higher Ho(3+) concentrations with simultaneous enhancement in 2 μm emission. Hence, this newly developed glass codoped with Yb(3+)/Ho(3+) is promising glass for sensitized 2 μm emission applications as broad band tunable lasers because of the combination of low phonon energy (707 cm(-1)), high energy transfer efficiency, moderately high emission cross-section (5.33×10(-21) cm(2)) and larger effective half-width of the emission band value of 169 nm.