Better understanding of the role of SiO2, P2O5 and Al2O3 on the spectroscopic properties of Yb3+ doped silica sol-gel glasses

Abstract Yb 3 + doped silica sol-gel glass powders were prepared with different concentrations of SiO 2 , Al 2 O 3 and P 2 O 5 in order to understand the impact of the glass composition on the Yb 3 + emission properties. In this paper, we clearly show that not only the Al/P ratio but also the SiO 2 content have an impact on the Yb 3 + spectroscopic properties. Our results provide new insight on the real impact of the composition on the spectroscopic properties of Yb 3 + doped sol-gels: we demonstrate that an increase in the Al 2 O 3 content at the expense of P 2 O 5 leads to an increase in the intensity of the emission at 1000 nm of the Yb 3 + ions whereas an increase in the SiO 2 content decreases it. We clearly showed that the inexpensive sol-gel approach can be easily used when investigating new Yb 3 + doped silica glasses.