Photoinduced Defects in Chalcogenide Glasses

Abstract

Prolonged exposure to strongly absorbed light induces a large density of metastable defects in chalcogenide glasses. Observed properties of the new defects include light-in-duced ESR, extrinsic absorption below the band-gap energy and nonradiative recombination. The defect creation apparently underlies the well-known reversible photostructural change, and our data support a recent model of optically induced defect pairs.