Optical spectroscopic properties of active nano-crystal doped transparent glass composites

Cr4+ and some Cr3+ ions doped tunable laser media operate in optical telecommunication bands. The tunability of some Cr 3+ doped media cover the telecom O,E,S,C and L bands while Er doped glass, widely used in optical amplifiers, covers only C bands. If the telecom utilizes Cr doped materials as the amplified media in fiber lasers and amplifiers, it can revolutionize the optical communications. But making Cr doped crystal in fiber form is difficult and expensive while the glass is the best material to make the fiber form. One solution to solve this problem is to synthesize the glass composites which have the good mechanical properties of glasses and perfect optical properties of bulk single crystals. In this thesis, synthesis and optical properties of chromium doped transparent glass-ceramics with the chemical composition similar to Cunyite(Cr4+:Ca2GeO 4) laser crystal are presented. Broadband structureless fluorescence and high quantum efficiency of new glass-ceramic make it the promising medium for fiber lasers and amplifiers. One barrier in synthesizing the glass ceramics is controlling the size of the nanocrystals inside the glass matrix. Since the glass composite is a two-phase (glass and crystal phase) system, the size of nano-crystals must be small to reduce the scattering and consequently produce the transparent sample. In order to produce smaller nano-crystals inside the glass matrix, porous glass with pore size of 4nm is also investigated. The optical properties of synthesized porous-glass show the crystal having a few lattice parameters in size can be grown inside the pore network.