Co-doping of glasses with rare earth ions and metallic nanoparticles for frequency up-conversion

We explore different approaches to achieve co-doping of glasses with rare earth ions and metallic nanoparticles, and to manipulate the spectral position of the particles' surface plasmon resonance. The final goal is to find a composite material with improved efficiency of frequency up-conversion of light for photovoltaic applications. The potential for improvement has been shown by theoretical calculations predicting that absorption and emission probabilities of the ions can be enhanced when the plasmon resonance of the nanoparticles is close to the respective transition frequency of the ions. In this work we demonstrate the sequential co-doping of glasses already containing rare-earth ions with Ag nanoparticles, as well as implantation of rare-earth ions in glasses which already contained metallic nanoparticles. It could also be demonstrated that the surface plasmon resonance of the created particles can be tuned by femtosecond laser induced shape transformation of the Ag clusters.