%0 Journal Article %T Assessment of the main material issues for achieving an Er coupled to silicon nanoclusters infrared amplifier %+ Laboratorio di Nanoscienze %+ Centre de recherche sur les Ions, les MAtériaux et la Photonique (CIMAP - UMR 6252) %A Navarro-Urrios, D. %A Pitanti, A. %A Daldosso, N. %A Gourbilleau, Fabrice %A Khomenkova, Larysa %A Rizk, Richard %A Pavesi, L. %< avec comité de lecture %@ 1386-9477 %J Physica E: Low-dimensional Systems and Nanostructures %I Elsevier %V 41 %P 1029-1033 %8 2009 %D 2009 %K Silicon nanoclusters %K Erbium %K Optical amplifier %K Silicon photonics %K Waveguides %Z PACS: 78.55.-m; 78.66.-w; 81.15.Gh %Z Engineering Sciences [physics]/Optics / PhotonicJournal articles %X In this work we present the state of the art of our work to obtain an infrared optical amplifier in which Er3+ doped SiO2 sensitised with Si nanoclusters (Si-nc) act as the active material to provide the signal amplification. As a result of a careful optimisation of the deposition parameters we have achieved that the Er3+ fraction coupled with the Si-nc with respect to the total optically active Er3+ content is about 23%. This result has been determined both by quantitative measurements of the first excited state population and by pump and probe amplification measurements under non-resonant pumping, where 1 dB cm-1 of internal gain (reduction of 2 dB cm-1 of the initial absorption losses) has been obtained. We will discuss several material issues that are mandatory to address and then overcome in order to optimise the fraction of Er3+ coupled to Si-nc, with the aim of exciting all the ions through indirect transfer. In particular we will address: carrier absorption (CA) in Si-nc, cooperative up-conversion and non-radiative recombination in Er3+, together with the distance dependent interaction and Auger back- transfer processes in the Er/Si-nc coupled system. %G English %L cea-00407921 %U https://cea.hal.science/cea-00407921 %~ CEA %~ CNRS %~ INSA-ROUEN %~ NIMPH-CIMAP %~ COMUE-NORMANDIE %~ IRAMIS-CIMAP %~ UNIROUEN %~ ENSICAEN %~ UNICAEN %~ INSA-GROUPE %~ CIMAP %~ IRAMIS