LUMINESCENCE AND GUIDED-OPTICS IN ER-DOPED GLASS AND GAAS FILMS

We investigated luminescence properties of highly Er-doped silicate gl ass films prepared from doped silicate targets using RF magnetron sput tering technique. The Er-doped films show a strong, room-temperature l uminescence at 1.54 mu m wavelength. Fluorescence decay lifetime of up to 9 ms was obtained with the three-component glass. A strong correla tion was observed between the lifetime and the melting temperature of glass over a broad range of host composition. The results indicate tha t network modifiers, such as sodium ions, soften the silica glass netw ork and thus alleviate formation of Er pairs or clusters. The Er-doped thin-film waveguides fabricated on thick-oxide-grown silicon substrat es show a propagation loss of less than 1 dB/cm. The relation of optic al to electronic properties of Er-doped GaAs is modeled.