The dependence of luminescence intensity on Sm3+ ions concentration in alkali borotellurite (ABTe) glasses has been studied. The quenching of luminescence intensity happens around mol% concentration of Sm3+ ions and it can relate the energy transfer process through cross– relaxation (CR), the CR channels in ABTe: Sm3+ have been shown. The method of Van Uitert was used to find the dominant interaction mechanism for energy transfer process. | Communications in Physics, Vol. 26, No. 2 (2016), pp. 193-199 DOI: LUMINESCENCE QUENCHING OF Sm3+ IONS IN ALKALI BOROTELLURITE GLASSES VU PHI TUYEN† Graduate University of Science and Technology, Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology PHAN VAN DO Thuy Loi University, 175 Tay Son, Dong Da, Hanoi, Vietnam † E-mail: vptuyen@ Received 30 March 2016 Accepted for publication 25 May 2016 Abstract. The dependence of luminescence intensity on Sm3+ ions concentration in alkali borotellurite (ABTe) glasses has been studied. The quenching of luminescence intensity happens around mol% concentration of Sm3+ ions and it can relate the energy transfer process through cross– relaxation (CR), the CR channels in ABTe: Sm3+ have been shown. The method of Van Uitert was used to find the dominant interaction mechanism for energy transfer process. Keywords: alkali borotellurite glass; luminescence quenching. Classification numbers: . I. INTRODUCTION Borate glasses doped with trivalent rare earth (RE3+ ) have been extensively investigated due to intriguing properties such as good transparency in the IR, low melting point and high solubility of rare earth [1–3]. Disadvantages of these glasses are high phonon energy with strong occurrence of multi-phonon and reduced luminescence efficiency of the material. The tellurite glass exhibits some outstanding features as low melting points, slow crystallization rates, good thermal and chemical stability, low cut off phonon energy in the order of 600-800 cm−1 and high refractive index, which favors the high spontaneous transition rates [4]. The presence of an amount of TeO2 in the alkali borate glass can reduce the cut-off phonon energy of glass, which minimizes multi-phonon decay processes between energy levels which are very close to those of the lanthanide ions, and therefore the quantum efficiency of fluorescent processes increases [4, 5]. Among the RE3+ ions, Sm3+ ion is widely used .
