Low-Temperature Luminescence of Lead Silicate Glass

Abstract

The temperature quenching of intrinsic luminescence of a lead silicate glass of the 20PbO · 80SiO2 composition has been investigated in the temperature range 7-200 K. It has been found that the temperature behavior of the intensity of intrinsic luminescence does not obey the well-known Mott's law for intracenter quenching of luminescence but is adequately described by the empirical Street's formula. It has been dem-onstrated that, with allowance made for the disorder of the atomic structure, the experimental temperature dependence of the luminescence intensity of the glass can be represented as a superposition of Mott's depen-dences for an ensemble of local luminescence centers. The obtained distribution of luminescence centers over the activation energies of quenching has an asymmetric form with prevailing low-energy states. It has been assumed that this feature has a general character and, at low temperatures, determines the specificity of the processes of nonradiative relaxation of the electronic subsystem for many oxide glasses. © Pleiades Publishing, Ltd., 2010.