Thermal and spectroscopic properties of Nd3+-doped novel fluorogallate glass

Abstract An Nd 3+ -doped fluorogallate glass with better thermal stability ( T g  = 650.5 °C, Δ T  = 190 °C), and lower linear thermal expansion coefficient (8.7 × 10 −6 /°C) compared with other commercialized laser glasses is reported in this paper. Judd–Ofelt theory is applied to the absorption spectrum of the glass to derive the intensity parameters ( Ω t ), which are in turn used to calculate the radiative properties of Nd 3+ luminescent levels. The developed glass possesses the widest effective emission bandwidth (Δ λ eff  = 49 nm) ever reported at around 1.07 μm, large gain bandwidth parameter ( σ em  × Δ λ eff  = 102.9 × 10 −27  cm 3 ), and high fluorescence quantum efficiency ( η  = 66%). These results indicate that this new kind of material is an interesting candidate for laser applications.