Influence of Al/Nd ratio on light-emitting properties of Nd-doped glass prepared by sol-gel process

For rare earth doped silica-based glasses derived by sol-gel process, Al was used as a modifier in order to improve the dispersion of the rare earth ion in silica lattices, and thus, make the higher rare earth doped silica glasses without clustering possible. In this research, the influence of the ratio of Al to Nd on the fluorescence intensity and lifetime was studied in details to get the material which has a strong fluorescence intensity as well as the long fluorescence lifetime enough for integrated amplifier and laser use. Ten samples in the from of powder with different Al/Nd and different Nd concentration were prepared by sol- gel process. These powders were gotten by heating the dried gels in a surface in air environment. The result of the fluorescence intensity and lifetime show that the Al/Nd equals 10 with 1 mole Nd, that is the recipe 100SiO2:10AlO1.5:1 NdO1.5 has the strongest fluorescence intensity in the ten samples. But its τ1/e is only 110 μs. For 100SiO2:20ALO1.5:0.25 NdO1.5, the obtained τ1/e is 216 μs without special OH movement treatment. The research results show that we need to balance the fluorescence intensity and the lifetime to choose the suitable recipe for practice use.