Scholarly Research Exchange SRX Materials Science • Volume 2010 • Article ID 101747 • doi:10.3814/2010/101747 Research Article Structural and Optical Characterisation of an Erbium/Ytterbium Doped Hybrid Material Developed via a Nonhydrolytic Sol-Gel Route M. Oubaha, 1 R. Copperwhite, 1 C. McDonagh, 1 P. Etienne, 2 and B. D. MacCraith 1 1 Optical Sensors Laboratory, National Centre for Sensor Research, School of Physical Sciences, Dublin City University, Dublin 9, Ireland 2 Groupe d’Etude des Semiconducteurs, Universit´ e de Montpellier 2, UMR-CNRS 5650, Place Eug´ ene Bataillon, 34090 Montpellier, France Correspondence should be addressed to M. Oubaha, mohamed.oubaha@dcu.ie Received 28 July 2009; Revised 1 October 2009; Accepted 1 October 2009 Copyright © 2010 M. Oubaha et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This paper proposes the development and structural characterisation of an Er 3+ /Yb 3+ doped hybrid organic-inorganic material synthesised by a nonhydrolytic sol-gel process. By using a pumping laser diode at 980 nm, a typical Er 3+ luminescence has been recorded in the near infrared region (1.53–1.55 μm). However, the detected fluorescence was particularly weak compared to that generally observed in pure mineral materials, suggesting the occurrence of strong quenching due to multiphonon relaxation processes. To understand this behaviour, structural characterisation of both of the matrix and the local environment of Er 3+ ions were conducted employing infrared spectroscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance, electron paramagnetic resonance, and neutron scattering. These studies showed that the major phenomenon competing with the Er 3+ fluorescence is intimately associated to the strong vibrational modes of the organic species that involve multiphonon relaxation processes, resulting in energy dissipation within the host matrix. 1. Introduction Since the early 1990s hybrid organic-inorganic has been very popular for the development of novel materials with tuneable properties and morphologies. In particular, Ormosils (organically modified silicon) (R ′ xSi(OR)4-x) synthesised by the sol-gel process [1] have been widely studied for the preparation of hybrid organic- inorganic materials for different applications such as separa- tion [2, 3], sensing [4, 5], surface protection [6, 7], and optics [8–12]. In the optics field, an exciting challenge was the develop- ment of integrated optical devices that allow the integration of several functions on one chip, which has become possible for example by combining a photolitographic process with photocurable hybrid sol-gel materials [12, 13]. However, to our knowledge, the fabrication of active integrated optical circuits employing photocurable hybrid sol-gel materials has not been reported previously, despite their great potential to enable the use of large bandwidth lasers. One of the major challenges in the development of Er 3+ doped hybrid materials for optical amplification around 1550 nm is the avoidance of OH groups in the material. Unfortunately, these groups are inherent to the hydrolytic sol-gel process and are well known to compete with the Er 3+ luminescence by nonradiative decay processes [14, 15]. In this paper, we report the development of a novel OH- free Er 3+ /Yb 3+ codoped photocurable material employing a nonhydrolytic sol-gel route. The spectroscopic behaviour of the active dopants is correlated to the structure of the host matrix by means of near infrared spectroscopy (NIR), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR), and neutron scattering. 2. Experimental 2.1. Material. In order to avoid any relaxation due to the OH groups, inherent to the hydrolytic sol-gel route, the goal of the material synthesis consists of obtaining an OH- free condensed organo-silane. To achieve this, the sol-gel synthesis was conducted via a nonhydrolytic sol-gel process, as sketched in Figure 1.