Long Yi, Li Jianfeng, Fang Zaijin, Guan Bai-Ou
Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Optical Fiber Sensing and Communications, Institute of Photonics Technology, Jinan University Guangzhou 510632 China
RSC Adv. 2020 Mar 25;10(21):12217-12223. doi: 10.1039/d0ra01991g. eCollection 2020 Mar 24.
Amorphous glass is a significant luminescence matrix for various applications, such as fiber lasers, lighting and 3D data storage. However, the efficiency of luminescence, especially upconversion (UC) luminescence, in glass is usually low. The UC emission of transition metal ions is hardly observed in amorphous glass. Here, a strategy is proposed to modulate the distribution of activators based on phase-separated glass for achieving high-efficiency UC luminescence. It is demonstrated that high-efficiency UC luminescence of Yb-Yb pairs and Mn-Yb dimers are observed in the amorphous glass due to the excellent confinement of phase-separated networks to activators. The UC emission intensity of the phase-separated glass is even higher than that of all-fluoride glass. Furthermore, KZnF and KYbF crystals are controllably precipitated from the glass matrix regulated by phase-separated networks. This perfectly confines activators in crystal environments, greatly enhances the UC luminescence and controllably tailors the luminescence color. This glass possesses large potential for promising application in tunable fiber lasers, multicolor displays and multiphoton excitation-based 3D optical data storage. Most importantly, the modulation strategy based on phase-separated networks paves a new way for manufacturing a wide range of optical gain materials featuring efficient and wavelength-tunable luminescence.
非晶玻璃是用于各种应用的重要发光基质，如光纤激光器、照明和3D数据存储。然而，玻璃中的发光效率，尤其是上转换（UC）发光效率通常较低。在非晶玻璃中很难观察到过渡金属离子的UC发射。在此，提出了一种基于相分离玻璃来调节激活剂分布的策略，以实现高效的UC发光。结果表明，由于相分离网络对激活剂的出色限制作用，在非晶玻璃中观察到了Yb-Yb对和Mn-Yb二聚体的高效UC发光。相分离玻璃的UC发射强度甚至高于全氟化物玻璃。此外，KZnF和KYbF晶体在相分离网络调节的玻璃基质中可控地析出。这将激活剂完美地限制在晶体环境中，极大地增强了UC发光并可控地调整了发光颜色。这种玻璃在可调谐光纤激光器、多色显示器和基于多光子激发的3D光学数据存储方面具有广阔的应用潜力。最重要的是，基于相分离网络的调制策略为制造具有高效和波长可调发光特性的各种光学增益材料开辟了一条新途径。
