| Summary: | Aerodynamic levitation method has been successfully used to prepare new Er ^3+ /Yb ^3+ co-doped La _2 O _3 -Nb _2 O _5 -Ta _2 O _5 glasses. 980 nm laser can be used to excite the glass for strong absorption of Yb ^3+ ions. The glass show high infrared transmittance of ∼80%. Moreover, the OH ^− concentration is very low with the value of ∼7 ppm, indicating excellent infrared transmission. The glass performs good optical properties with refractive index of near 2.3. The plane sweeping of EDS reveals that Er ^3+ and Yb ^3+ are distributed homogeneously in the glass. Strong down-conversion luminescence centered at 1530 nm has been achieved from the glass excited at 980 nm. The near-infrared emission is due to the transition of ^4 I _13/2 → ^4 I _15/2 in Er ^3+ ions. After fitting the decay curve, the lifetime of the near-infrared emission can be decided to be ∼5.517 ms. Such long lifetime is very helpful for rare earth ions to achieve strong emission.
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