Excitation pattern of the blue emission in Ge-doped silica

The luminescence of Ge-doped glassy SiO₂ has been investigated at room temperature using a deuterium lamp as the excitation source in the ultraviolet and vacuum ultraviolet energy range. Two emission bands are observed around 3 and 4 eV as the excitation increases from 4.5 to 8 eV. The peak shift and bandwidth broadening of the emission around 3 eV indicate the overlapping of several bands. We carried out a Gaussian best-fit approach of the detected spectra and extracted the excitation spectra of three distinct emission: a 2.9 eV band with two excitation channels at 4.7 and 5.3 eV and no contribution above 6 eV and the well-known composite β-band (3.1 eV). The latter is resolved into two Gaussian components whose excitation spectra present three main excitations around 5.1, 6.5 and 7.3 eV.