Luminescence and guided-optics in Er-doped glass and GaAs films

We investigated luminescence properties of highly Er-doped silicate glass films prepared from doped silicate targets using RF magnetron sputtering technique. The Er-doped films show a strong, room-temperature luminescence at 1.54 μm wavelength. Fluorescence decay lifetime of up to 9 ms was obtained with the three-component glass. A strong correlation was observed between the lifetime and the melting temperature of glass over a broad range of host composition. The results indicate that network modifiers, such as sodium ions, soften the silica glass network and thus alleviate formation of Er pairs or clusters. The Er-doped thin-film waveguides fabricated on thick-oxide-grown silicon substrates show a propagation loss of less than 1 dB/cm. The relation of optical to electronic properties of Er-doped GaAs is modeled.