Rare-earth organic complexes for polymer optical fiber and waveguide amplifiers

Summary form only given. There has been much recent interest in rare-earth-doped fibers and waveguides for their application in amplifiers and lasers. However, nearly all of the host materials used so far have been inorganic glasses and crystals, considering the utility of polymer optical fibers and waveguides, rare-earth-doped polymer systems are also of interest. One way to incorporate rare-earth ions into polymers is to encapsulate the ions in organic chelates and dope these complexes directly. The potential of two types of rare-earth chelates, tetrakis(dibenzoylmethide) (D/sub 4/) and tetrakis(benzoylbifluoroacetonate) [(BTF)/sub 4/], have been evaluated by studying their radiative properties using a Judd-Ofelt treatment.