Luminescence characteristics of Nd 3+ doped bismuth borate glasses for photonic applications B. Munisudhakar a , C. Nageswara Raju b,⇑ , M. Reddi Babu c , N. Manohar Reddy d , L. Rama Moorthy c a Research Scholar, JNTUA, Ananthapuramu 515002, India b Department of Physics, Sri Venkateswara Degree College, Kadapa 516001, India c Department of Physics, Chadalawada Ramanamma Engineering College, Tirupati 517506, India d Department of Physics, Sri Venkateswara College of Engineering, Tirupati 517502, India article info Article history: Received 9 March 2019 Received in revised form 24 May 2019 Accepted 29 May 2019 Available online xxxx Keywords: Bismuth borate glasses Absorption J-O parameters Emission spectra Decay time abstract Nd 3+ doped BBZPA glasses were prepared by conventional melt quenching method and used to study their structural, absorption, emission and decay properties. From XRD, amorphous nature of the undoped glass has been confirmed. The J-O intensity parameters O k (k = 2, 4, 6) and the various radiative param- eters were calculated from J-O analysis. From the emission spectra, it is observed that, the laser transition 4 F 3/2 ? 4 I 11/2 at 1059 nm is more intense transition. The decay curves for prepared glasses exhibited sin- gle exponential decay. The above results suggest that Nd 3+ doped BBZPA glasses could be suitable for photonic applications. Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Conference on Nano Science & Engineering Application (ICONSEA-2018) Centre for Nano Science and Technology, ICONSEA- 2018 Ó 2018 Elsevier Ltd. 1. Introduction Over the several years, rare earth (RE) ions doped borate glasses have received a great deal of attention due to their potential appli- cations in the fabrication of many optical devices such as solid state lasers, optical amplifiers, light emitting diodes (LEDs), fiber lasers, wave-guides and sensors [1–2]. Among the existing borate, silicate and phosphate glasses, the borate glasses have unique characteristics such as high trans- parency, high thermal stability, high solubility for rare earth (RE) ions, low meting point, low refractive index and low dispersion [3,4]. But, these glasses have less practical importance due to their high phonon energy [5]. Hence, glasses with low phonon energy are more suitable for high efficiency lasers and fiber amplifiers [6]. Therefore, addition of heavy metal oxides to B 2 O 3 , the refrac- tive index can be increased and phonon energy can be reduced. Recently, it has been observed that, the heavy metal oxide (HMO) glasses are very attractive hosts for rare-earth ions because of their high refractive index, lower transition temperature, large spectral transmission window and low phonon energy [7–9]. Many trivalent rare earth ions such as Pr 3+ , Nd 3+ , Sm 3+ ,Yb 3+ , Ho 3+ , Er 3+ and Tm 3+ were doped in different glass matrices to study their absorp- tion and emission properties. Among the rare earth ions, the Nd 3+ ion is one of the most widely investigated ions for solid state lasers due to its laser emis- sion at 1064 nm ( 4 F 3/2 ? 4 I 11/2 ) in addition to the other possible emissions at 1800 ( 4 F 3/2 ? 4 I 15/2 ), 1350 ( 4 F 3/2 ? 4 I 35/2 ) and 880 nm ( 4 F 3/2 ? 4 I 9/2 ). Of all the 4 F 3/2 ? 4 I J (J = 9/2, 11/2, 13/2, and 15/2) emission transitions of Nd 3+ ion, the 4 F 3/2 ? 4 I 11/2 transi- tion is more suitable for generating efficient broadband laser emis- sion at 1060 nm. In addition, the other lasing transitions at 880 nm ( 4 F 3/2 ? 4 I 9/2 ), and at 1350 nm (4F 3/2 ? 4I 13/2 ) are suitable for diode pumped powerful lasers and telecommunication transition win- dows respectively [10–12]. The purpose of present study is to prepare different concentra- tions of Nd 3+ – doped bismuth borate glasses by conventional melt quench technique and to investigate the optical absorption, lumi- nescence and decay properties of the 4 F 3/2 ? 4 I 11/2 transition level for laser applications. 2. Experimental procedure 2.1. Glass preparation A series of glass samples doped with different concentrations of Nd 3+ ions were prepared using the chemical composition of https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2019.05.349 2214-7853/Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Conference on Nano Science & Engineering Application (ICONSEA-2018) Centre for Nano Science and Technology, ICONSEA-2018 Ó 2018 Elsevier Ltd. ⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail address: nageswararaju.c@svcolleges.edu.in (C. Nageswara Raju). Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Materials Today: Proceedings journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/matpr Please cite this article as: B. Munisudhakar, C. Nageswara Raju, M. Reddi Babu et al., Luminescence characteristics of Nd 3+ doped bismuth borate glasses for photonic applications, Materials Today: Proceedings, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2019.05.349