A few days ago, at the Journal of Applied Physics of the American Physical Society (AIP) Publishing Group, researchers at the University of Leeds in the UK reported laser-assisted research on a glass.
This glass material is obtained by doping a type of glass made of zinc, sodium, lanthanum and rare earth element lanthanum together. Waveguide amplifiers doped with germanium have received attention in themselves because the electronic transition of germanium occurs at a standard wavelength of 1.5 microns for communication technology.
Planar waveguides direct light to propagate along a single geometric plane. The researchers used a technique called ultrafast laser plasma doping. This technology utilizes an ultrafast laser to incorporate germanium ions as a thin film into a silicon dioxide substrate. The researchers aimed the high-intensity laser pointer at the surface of the glass that was doped with bismuth, blasting a tiny pit and creating a thin film formed by the jet of material. The measurement results produced by the film formation process focus on the ablation threshold of this glass. This amount describes the minimum energy required to separate atoms or molecules by intense laser irradiation. The researchers determined how the ablation threshold of this system is affected by the laser beam radius, the number of laser pulses, and the concentration of the erbium ion dopant.
They found that the ablation threshold does not depend on the low doping concentration of the cerium ions required to make the device. The researchers also analyzed the shape and characteristics of the pits formed by the explosion in the glass. Understanding the morphology of the pits created during the manufacturing process is important for controlling properties such as porosity, surface area, and material scattering or the ability to absorb laser pointer light.