Low-temperature sintering of bismuth-doped glass with high fluorescence properties from mesoporous silica SBA-15

Abstract A kind of bismuth-doped silica glasses have been produced successfully by spark plasma sintering at 1070 °C using bismuth-doped SBA-15 powders. The samples were detected by X-ray diffraction, UV–vis–NIR, photoluminescence, fluorescent decay curve and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The results showed that the samples possess favorable near-infrared fluorescence and the 0.9 mol% sample is the best one among these glasses. The emission peaks at ~1180, ~1150 and ~1250 nm can be observed when excited by 500, 700 and 800 nm. The average lifetimes of 0.9 mol% under 500, 700 and 800 nm excitation are 189.87, 311.46 and 132.16 μs. Furthermore, the value of the important optical parameter σemτ is 5.79 × 10−24 cm2s at 800 nm excitations, which is 36.8% and 9.2% larger than bismuth-doped germanate glasses and phosphate glasses that have been reported. These emission peaks could be decomposed into three bands at ~1150, ~1240 and ~1440 nm via Gaussian decomposition. Based on the results of this work, it is concluded that the NIR emission peaks at ~1150, ~1240 and ~1440 nm correspond to Bi0, Bi+ and (Bi2)2-, respectively. This glass with excellent luminescence properties could offer a practical material to improve the performance of broadband fiber amplifiers and tunable lasers.