Coexistence of fast photodarkening and slow photobleaching in Ge19As21Se60 thin films

Abstract

We experimentally demonstrate the coexistence of two opposite photo-effects, viz. fast photodarkening (PD) and slow photobleaching (PB) in Ge19As21Se60 thin films, when illuminated with a laser of wavelength 671nm, PD appears to begin instantaneously upon light illumination and saturates in tens of seconds. By comparison, PB is a slower process that starts only after PD has saturated. Although we could observe the coexistence of PD/PB even at moderate, one order of magnitude lower intensity of 0.2 W/cm2, the kinetics of transformation is significantly slowed down. However, both PD and PB follow stretched exponetial dependence on time. Modeling of overall change as a linear sum of two contributions suggests that the changes in As and Ge parts of glass network respond to light indepndent of each other.

6pages, 3 figures and 1 table

References in corpus (1)

• Fabrication and characterization of femtosecond laser written waveguides in chalcogenide glass

Cited by in corpus (3)

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• Quantification of nonlinear absorption in ternary As-Sb-Se chalcogenide glasses
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