Near-infrared luminescence of bismuth in fluorine-doped-core silica fibres

Photoluminescence spectra and decay kinetics of bismuth inclusions in silica optical fibres containing fluorine additive in the core glass are studied in the vicinity of a wavelength of 1420 nm at temperatures of 80-900 K under a continuous wave (CW) and a pulsed diode laser pump at a wavelength of 808 nm. At high fluorine concentration and low temperatures, luminescence decay kinetics becomes essentially bi-exponential, typical lifetimes being 720 and 1200 mu s. Hydrogen and deuterium loading at pressures of up to 125 bar leads to a decrease of the steady-state luminescence intensity and lifetime. We attribute this to the appearance of an energy transfer bridge from bismuth clusters to vibrational degrees of freedom of diatomic molecules. It is found that in the presence of H-2 or D-2 molecules experiencing random walking in silica, luminescence decay kinetics stop following a single exponential function even in fluorine-free silica-core fibre, deviation from the single exponent being greater at higher temperatures. The induced quenching rate increases with the increase of temperature as well and is greater for H-2 molecules. All conditions being equal, the equilibrium concentration of hydrogen molecules is greater in heavily fluorinated silica. At temperatures below similar to 250 K, the presence of dissolved molecules has no effect, which speaks for the primary importance of having rotational degrees of freedom of migrating interstitial diatomic molecules in an excited state for effective quenching of bismuth electronic excitations. It is found that the influence of dissolved deuterium is weaker than that of hydrogen. We attribute this feature to a greater angular momentum of the D-2 molecule and correspondingly smaller energy of the molecule's rotational quantum. The results of the experiments show that bismuth clusters mainly located in voids of the silica network, rather than bismuth point defects, are responsible for near-infrared luminescence. (c) 2015 Optical Society of America