Synthesis and study of novel erbium-doped La2O3-Al2O3 glasses for on-chip waveguide amplifier

Highly erbium-doped xEr2O3-44La2O3-(56-x)Al2O3 glasses are synthesized by an aerodynamic levitation (ADL) technique. The optimum erbium-doped concentration in 5Er2O3-44La2O3-51Al2O3 glass can reach ~1.61 × 1021 cm−3. All the fluorescence emission spectra of the glasses under different wavelength bands are measured. The results show the strongest emission intensity at communication band (C-band). The longest radiation lifetime in 4I13/2 → 4I15/2 transition is about ~5.23 ms. The Judd-Ofelt (J-O) parameters of 5Er2O3-44La2O3-51Al2O3 glass are also calculated to evaluate the potential of the glass as a substrate material for optical waveguide amplifier. Based on the parameters of the glass, We used MATLAB to write the gain simulation model of the waveguide amplifier, combined with the COMSOL software to simulate and optimize the waveguide geometry, and calculated the overall gain characteristic curves of optical waveguide amplifiers with different lengths are calculated theoretically. An internal net gain of up to 12.13 dB/cm in the C-band is obtained from the hybrid waveguide amplifier with 1 cm.