The proposal of this work was the investigation of optical properties of LiGaSiO4 samples using Fe3+ ions as substitucional impurity. Oxide materials doped with transition metals can present broad absorption and emission bands in visible and near infrared regions. These bands are tunable and allow various applications, in medicine, communications and solid state lasers, for example. The samples containing 5 at % of Fe3+ were produced by ceramic methods from high purity raw oxides Li2CO3, beta-Ga2O3, SiO2 and an appropriated amount of Fe2O3 and pressed in circular tablets with 10 x 2mm. The thermal treatment duration was 96 h under a temperature of 1000ºC in ambient pressure electric furnace. After the thermal treatment, samples were pulverized and examined by X ray diffraction in a powder diffractometer, and the obtained data compared with JCPDS data base. We verify the formation of LiGaSiO4 accompanied by LiGa5O8 and gamma-Li5GaSi2O8 undesirable phases. In sequence we carried out the room temperature photothermal and photoluminescence spectroscopy. The obtained spectra show wide photoluminescence and absorption bands. From the optical data we identified energy levels and radiative lifetimes, calculated the crystal field and electronic repulsion parameters and identified the site symmetry of the Fe3+ in the samples.
Ceramics; photothermal; photoluminescence
