Preparation, processing, and fluorescence characteristics of neodymium-doped silica glass prepared by the sol-gel process

Inorganic and organically modified rare-earth-doped silica gels

“…Most of the organic groups in the hybrid gels have decomposed after heating to 800°C (Babonneau et al, 1992), but to distinguish these samples from those prepared with TMOS only, they are still referred to as hybrid gels, or ormosils. The densities of the samples heated to 800°C ranged from 1.6 g/mL to 2.2 g/mL, depending on the sample composition, and were similar to previously reported densities (Moreshead et al, 1990;Laczka, 1991).…”

Sol-gel silica-on-silicon buried-channel EDWAs

“…Methods for incorporating Nd, Er, and Yb into sol-gel monoliths were developed some time ago [68]- [70], and considerable effort has now been expended on rare-earth-doped sol-gel waveguide amplifiers [71]. Initial investigations were performed on Nd-doped glasses [72], [73], but attention is now concentrated on Er doping, using hosts ranging from pure SiO [74] to TiO -SiO [75]- [78], Al O -SiO [79], [80], P O -SiO [81], Al O -TiO -SiO [82], and GeO -SiO , with both weak [83] and high [84] germania contents.…”

Microstructure of gel-glasses in the SiO2−Nd2O3 system

“…They suggested also oxygen coordination number to be 6 around neodymium [6]. Although the sol-gel process allows the preparation of glasses with much higher concentrations of neodymium the problem of microscopic clustering remains even if some other appropriated components are added [8][9][10][11].…”