Comparative Study Of The Strength Of Er Indirect Optical Pumping In Silicate Glasses Codoped With Si Clusters And Er3+ Ions

Erbium-doped silicon-rich dielectrics are expected to lead to compact and scalable cost-effective optical amplifiers due to the high sensing of Er via nano-silicon. Different silicates glasses, namely: Aluminum-silicates, soda-lime glasses and fused silica codoped with Si and Er were used in order to explore the mechanism of energy transfer from Si nanoclusters (Si nc) to Er. Si excess of 5 and 15 at.% and different Er doses, so that the resulting Er peak concentration could vary from 2x10(19) up to 6x 10(20) cm(-3), were introduced in the wafers by ion implantation technique. Thermal treatments in a rapid thermal process were carried out before and after Er implantation in order to precipitate Si nc, and to find the accurate temperature to obtain the best Er emission around 1540 nm. Very intense emission, comparing to structures only doped with Er, has been detected in all co-implanted glasses. By time resolved photoluminescence experiments we measured lifetimes of the exited state of Er3+ ions ranging from 2.5 to 12 ms and an effective excitation cross-section about 1x10(-17) - 6 x10(-17) cm(2) (depending on the Er dose and Si excess). This is orders of magnitude higher than the Er direct absorption cross-section (about 10(-21) cm(2)). By quantifying Er emission we found only 10% of the total Er concentration was effectively excited through Si nc.