Ion-exchange-induced formation of glassy electrooptical and nonlinear optical nanomaterial

Subsurface electrooptical glass-ceramic layers are formed in an alkaline-silica-niobate glass using ion exchange technique. Ways of selection of glass compositions and ion exchange conditions to form such layers are discussed. It is shown that there are two ways to form glass-ceramics; the first one is the glass ceramization during the ion exchange treatment at higher temperatures, and the second one is the glass ceramization in heat treatment of the samples ion exchanged at lower temperatures, at which glass crystallization does not take place. The latter allows producing glass-ceramics layers of controllable thickness, because in this case diffusion process strongly obeys Fick equation.