Abstract

Chalcogenide glasses are compound glasses containing one or more of the chalcogen elements S, Se, and Te and metals such as Ga, As, and Ge¹. The main applications of these glasses are their use as infrared transmitting windows and as "light pipes” for infrared radiation when pulled into fibre form. The infrared transparency is caused by the low phonon energies of the glass structure. The low phonon energies also reduce the non-radiative decay rates in rare-earth doped chalcogenide glasses making them interesting for applications such as lasers and fibre amplifiers^2,3,4.

© 1996 IEEE