Photosensitivity Color-Center Model for Ge-Doped Silica Preforms

Abstract

A new photosensitivity physical model for Ge-doped silica preforms based on color-center photoreactions is presented. Simulation results are in close agreement with experimental results obtained by several condensed matter physics research groups working in this field, suggesting that the photoreactions of this model may, indeed, describe the physical processes involved in Ge-doped silica preform photosensitivity. The proposed photosensitivity model is defined by two differential equations that describe the temporal evolution of a set of color-center concentrations. The first is a modification of a very fast reversible reaction previously proposed by Fujimaki et al., where the reaction precursor has a different chemical structure (it is a neutral oxygen divacancy NODV unrelated to the previously proposed germanium lone pair center GLPC). The chemical structure of this precursor defect explains the generation of nonintrinsic neutral oxygen monovacancy ðNOMVÞ color centers. These centers are transformed into GeE0 defects by means of a second nonlinear reaction. This justifies the slow increase in the absorption peak experimentally measured at 6.3 eV, which had no satisfactory explanation.