Upconversion in low rare-earth concentrated phosphate glasses using direct NaYF 4 :Er 3+ , Yb 3+ nanoparticles doping

Abstract Upconversion (UC) was obtained from phosphate glasses which contain only 0.01 at.% of Er3 + and 0.06 at.% of Yb3 +. The glasses were prepared using direct doping method by adding NaYF4:Er3 +, Yb3 + nanoparticles (NPs) into the glass at a doping temperature of 575 °C and 3 minute dwell time. The fraction of NP's survival during glass preparation can be augmented from 5 to 20% when replacing Na2O by NaF in the glass. Our study suggests that the corrosion behavior of the glass melt is an important parameter to consider in order to engineer new NPs-containing glasses with high UC efficiency.