Effect of Pb ions on the optical absorption in Gd3Ga5O12 epitaxial films

We have studied the effect of Pb2+ impurities and Pb2+-Pb4+ pairs on the optical absorption between 200 and 860 nm in single-crystal gadolinium gallium garnet films grown by liquid-phase epitaxy from supercooled PbO-B2O3 fluxed melts containing 0.1–0.5 mol% gadolinia.