Tb 3+-doped fluorophosphate glasses with the composition of P 2 O 5-K 2 O-SrF 2-Al 2 O 3-x Tb 4 O 7 (where x = 0.1, 0.5, 1.0, 2.0 and 4.0 mol%) were prepared by a conventional high temperature melt quenching technique and characterized through absorption, emission, excitation and decay measurements. From the emission studies, a strong green emission at around 546 was observed, which corresponds to the 5 D 4 → 7 F 5 transition of Tb 3+ ion. Green/blue intensity ratios (I G /I B) were evaluated as a function of Tb 3+ concentration and vice versa. Higher I G /I B intensity ratio confirms the higher covalency between Tb-O bond and higher asymmetry around the Tb 3+ ions in the present fluorophosphate glasses. The decay curves for the 5 D 4 level of Tb 3+ ion were measured and found that they exhibited single exponential nature irrespective to the dopant concentration. The experimental lifetime was determined using single exponential fitting and found that it increased from 2.65 to 2.95 ms when Tb 3+ concentration increased from 0.1 mol% to 4.0 mol%. The derived properties were compared to the other Tb 3+-doped glasses in order to see the potentiality of the material for visible laser gain media at 546 nm.

A fiber-optic interferometric probe based on a two-mode fiber (TMF) is proposed and demonstrated for measuring the thermo-optic coefficients (TOCs) of liquid samples. The proposed probe can be simply fabricated by fusion-splicing a short piece of TMF to a lead single mode fiber (SMF) with small lateral offset, which makes interference between LP(01) and LP(02) modes. The sensing responses of the probe to temperature and surrounding refractive index (SRI) have been experimentally investigated to show the capability of simultaneous measurements; the phase change of the reflection spectrum was related to temperature variation and the intensity change was to SRI variation. The data analysis is made not only in the spectral domain but in the Fourier domain also to effectively quantify the measurements. The TOCs of several liquid samples including water, ethanol, and acetone have been obtained with the proposed method.

Silver nanowires with high aspect ratios of up to more than 60 were synthesized on a large scale by the redox reaction between silver nitrate and sodium diphenylamine sulfonate at room temperature and in the absence of surfactant and hard-template and seed. When the molar ratio of reductant sodium diphenylamine sulfonate and silver nitrate < or =1, most products were all the nanowires. When the molar ratio increases to 2:1, silver nanowires and nanobelts were concomitantly formed. The redox product N, N'-diphenylbenzidinedisulfonate and sodium diphenylamine sulfonate all play an important role in the formation of silver nanostructures. The structure, morphology, and composition of the silver nanowires were characterized by the X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray energy dispersive microanalysis (EDX), and UV-Vis spectroscopy respectively. High-resolution transmission microscopy (HRTEM) and selected area electron diffraction (SAED) reveal the single-crystal nature of the silver nanowires.

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A new optical fiber current sensor using a CdSe quantum dots doped optical fiber has been demonstrated with high Faraday rotation for remote sensing of current from 0 to 40 Amperes. It showed enhancement in the current sensitivity by about 2 times than that of the single mode optical fiber current sensor at 632 nm.