Ultraviolet excitation fine tuning of luminescence bands of oxygen-deficient centers in silica

The photoluminescence (PL) activity of oxygen deficient centers in commercial silica samples has been reconstructed by exciting in the spectral range of their optical absorption band around 5 eV. The fine tuning of the excitation was provided by a tunable pulsed optical parametric oscillator seeded by a Nd:yttrium–aluminum–garnet laser. The experimental results, analyzed in the spectral moment framework, indicate the presence of different centers whose spectral features are modulated by structural disorder typical of the glassy matrix. The photoluminescence excitation spectra at different emission energies evidence the composite structure of the luminescence bands around 3.1 and 4.2 eV, usually ascribed to triplet and singlet transitions of the same oxygen deficient center. Besides the well-known emission bands centered at 3.15 and 4.20 eV, the contribution of a new PL band below 3 eV is reported. Time resolved photoluminescence measurements of the low energy band give an estimate of its spectral characteristics, with peak position around 2.8 eV, full width at half maximum of about 1 eV and exponential lifetime of 840 ns.