Glass and Glass Ceramic Materials for Optical Applications

The research activities have focused on rare-earth doped glass-ceramics. One graduate student is working primarily on scintillator applications and two (Ashley and Patryk Piasecki) on basic optical properties. Research activities have expanded to include glass and glass-ceramic systems co-doped with rare-earths and silver. Subsequent heat-treatment of these materials produces silver nanoparticles and result in enhancement of the rare-earth luminescence. This work resulted in eight publications and five presentations at national and international meetings. This work has also involved two undergraduate students.

Lawrence Livermore National Lab has measured beta-induced luminescence on glass and glass-ceramic samples produced at Fisk in order to assess their potential as scintillator materials. One sample had luminescence nearly equal to the Schott IQI-301 commercial product and looks very promising for an improved radiography glass. Some preliminary work has been done on downconversion properties of rare-earth doped glasses and glass-ceramics. These materials would have applications in photovoltaic systems, where thermalization losses can be reduced significantly when more than one electron-hole pair is generated per incident photon.