Optical properties of Er3+ doped NaLuF4 transparent glass-ceramics produced by spark plasma sintering

Transparent oxyfluoride glass-ceramics (GCs) containing NaLuF4 nanocrystals doped with Er3+ have been prepared by combination of glass melt-quenching and spark plasma sintering (SPS) of glass powders. The parameters, such as temperature, pressure, particle size and holding times were optimized to obtain the densification of the powdered samples together with the desired transparency. The major advantage of this technique is the shorter times (few minutes) compared with those used for the preparation of these GCs by conventional heat treatments (more than 10 h). SPS presents an important inconvenient, which is the carbon contamination coming from graphite punch, this has been improved using Pt foils.