Influence of plasmonic and thermo-optical effects of silver nanoparticles on near-infrared optical thermometry in Nd3+-doped TeO2–ZnO glasses

Bezerra G.S.; Ocas L.R.; Kendji Kumada D.; Martins W.S.; Kassab L.R.P.; Reyna A.S. · Journal of Luminescence (2024) · DOI: 10.1016/j.jlumin.2023.120222

Resumen

Optical thermometers based on the luminescence of trivalent rare earth-doped materials are often explored due to their high sensitivity and performance in the visible and infrared spectral regions. Among them, Nd3+ ions are widely used because they operate efficiently in the main biological windows, although an increase in their sensitivity at low temperatures is still desired. This work aims to investigate the influence of the addition of silver nanoparticles (Ag-NPs) on the temperature-dependent luminescence of Nd3+ doped TeO2–ZnO glasses over wide temperature ranges (295–480 K). The study shows that the plasmonic effects induced by Ag-NPs lead to an absolute sensitivity increase of up to ∼28.6% in Nd3+-based thermometers operating through a set of three thermally coupled energy levels. In addition, thermometry studies using high-power excitation beams reveal that the thermo-optical properties of Ag-NPs favor optical thermometer sensitivity enhancement due to local heating effects and compensates for the losses caused by luminescence quenching at high concentration of Nd3+ ions. Moreover, an experiment analyzing the speckle patterns generated by Nd3+ doped TeO2–ZnO glasses, conducted for the first time to the best of our knowledge, confirms the influence of the thermo-optical effects of Ag-NPs in optimizing the sensitivity of optical thermometers.

Instituciones: Universidad Tecnológica del Perú