Ligand-driven wavelength-tunable and ultra- broadband infrared luminescence in single-ion-doped transparent hybrid materials

Here, tuning of the optical properties of emission centers by tailoring the ligand fields is investigated. Experimentally, it is demonstrated that Ni ² can act as a single emission species in multiple octahedral local environments. Nanocrystal-embedded hybrid materials are employed as hosts in order to take advantage of their convenience in local environment design for practical applications. Novel composite gain materials with high transparence are successfully made, and show interesting wavelength-tunable and ultrabroadband infrared luminescence covering the whole near-infrared region from 1 100 to 1 800 nm. The infrared luminescence peak positions can be finely tuned from 1 300 to 1 450 and to 1 570 nm, with the largest full width at half maximum being about 400nm and covering the telecommunication bands at 1 200-1 500 nm. According to the results of characterization, the unusual luminescence, interestingly, originates from Ni₂ in nanocrystals and the doping efficiency of Ni² is surprisingly high. The results demonstrate that the method presented may be an effective way to fabricate multifunctional light sources with various fundamental multifunctional applications from efficient broadband optical amplifiers to bio-imaging.