Evaluation of the Optical and Electrical Properties of Oxy-chalcogenide Glasses K. Richardson, Clemson University, S.W. Martin, Iowa State University, H. Jain, Lehigh University DMR-0312081 The preparation of candidate oxysulfide materials for optical applications (waveguides) will result in glasses that combine the superb chemical stability of oxides and the attractive linear and non-linear optical properties of sulfide materials. The figure in right demonstrates the successful production of amorphous oxysulfide materials through the sulfination of a range of different starting oxide materials. The composition space of our study has been also broadened to multicomponent Ge,Ga,Sb,S,Se materials. We have shown that the non-linear refractive index, n 2 , of these new glasses increases with the substitution of Ge for Ga in the glass host system Ge – Sb - S. This n 2 variation may be related to the total number of electronic lone pairs and to the position of the absorption band gap. . 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 0.5 G eO 2 - 0.2 Sb 2 O 3 - 0.30 B 2 O 3 0.80 G eO 2 - 0.2 Sb 2 O 3 Intensity (A .U.) W avenum ber (cm -1 ) B efore sulfination A fter sulfination Raman spectra of germanium antimony based glasses (exc = 632 nm) 0 50 100 150 200 250 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 Ge 23 Sb 7 S 70 Ge 18 Ga 5 Sb 7 S 70 P ho to ex p an sio n (nm ) D ose (M J/cm 3 ) The figure in left shows that the Ga-based glass is also photosensitive to laser irradiation. This glass exhibits a photo-expansion of the surface after laser irradiation. We have shown that the incorporation of Gallium in the germanate network increases the photosensitivity of the glass due to a redshift of bandgap but decreases the photoexpansion compared to that of Ga-free glass as seen in the below left figure. This may be understood by the presence of isolated GaS 4 units in the germanate glass network which restrict structure variation under laser exposure. The evidence for photosensitivity of the sulfo- selenide and oxysulfide bulks/films has been demonstrated and shows promise for use in