Preparation of high purity glasses in the Ga-Ge-As-Se system

Small additions of Ga to Ge-As-Se glasses are known to enhance rare earth ion solubility in Ge-As-Se chalcogenide glasses designed for active optical applications. The effect of variants and conditions for producing samples of an exemplar Ge16As17Se64Ga3 (atomic%) glass on optical transmission, and the content of limiting impurities, is investigated. To prepare the high-purity glass samples, chemical distillation for purification of the Ge-As-Se base-glass is used. Next, a new vapor phase transport approach of metallic Ga transfer in a Gal(3) flow is developed to purify and add the batch of metallic gallium into the silica-glass reactor for the Ge-As-Se-Ga glass synthesis. A thermodynamic equilibrium based vapor phase transport model is discussed. In the best examples of these glasses, the content of residual impurities is: hydrogen - 0.15 ppm, oxygen - <1 ppm, and transition metals - less than 0.1 ppm. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.