Optical properties of microstructures in fullerene-doped optical glasses

Microphotoluminescence and second-harmonic microscopy were used to study islands formed inside phosphate and fluorophosphate optical glasses with fullerene dopants. Scanning microphotoluminescence and second-harmonic microscopy indicated that fullerene dopants are subjected to strong influence from the glass matrix, which causes distortion of molecular symmetry, enhancement of fluorescence, and occurrence of noncentrosymmetry required by the macroscopic second-order optical nonlinearity.