Incorporation behavior of silver into aluminoborosilicate glasses by a staining method

Abstract

In order to fabricate graded-index optical elements with high quality through a staining method, it is important to investigate the behaviors of ion incorporation into glasses. Here, we carried out the silver-staining for aluminoborosilicate glasses with different fraction of non-bridging oxygen. The diffusion depth of silver was approximately 80μm for the staining at 300 C^o for 12 hours. This value was much deeper than that for a soda-lime silicate glass. The refractive index increased with 0.02 by the staining at 300 C^o for 3 to 6 hours.