Electron-spin resonance and fluorescence investigation of LaMgAl11O19:Ti3+, a potential tunable laser material

Single crystals of LaMgAl11O19:Ti (LMA:Ti) have been grown from the melt by the Verneuil (flame fusion) process. As-grown crystals contain titanium in both 3+ and 4+ oxidation states. Ti4+ ions can be reduced into the 3+ state by annealing at 1200 °C under hydrogen atmosphere. The crystals exhibit a broadband fluorescence extending from ∼600 to 1200 nm and peaking around 775 nm. The fluorescence lifetime is found to be ∼6 μs at 10 K against ∼4 μs at 300 K; it does not depend significantly on the emission wavelength, this indicating that fluorescence originates mainly from one type of Ti3+ active ions. Electron-spin-resonance (ESR) investigations reveal that Ti3+ ions are distributed among the three octahedral sites of the magnetoplumbite structure of the host, with a marked predominance for the regular octahedral site (2a), which contains about 90% of the titanium detected by ESR. Crystal field splitting of the t2g level has been estimated for the three sites and it is proposed that Ti3+ in the (12k) site is adjacent to a cationic defect. This new material is of potential interest for near infrared tunable laser application.