Hydrothermal synthesis of blue-emitting YPO₄:Yb³⁺ nanophosphor

Abstract

The blue-emitting YPO₄ phosphors doped with Yb³⁺ were prepared by a simple hydrothermal method. All the products were characterized by XRD and TEM, which revealed that they were zircon structure with leaf-like morphology. According to the analysis of photoluminescence spectra, upon ultraviolet (275 nm) excitation, the Yb³⁺ doped YPO₄ phosphor showed an intense blue emission composed of two main bands at 420 and 620 nm assigned to charge transfer state (CTS) → ²F_5/2 and CTS → ²F_7/2, respectively. Moreover, the optimum doping concentration of Yb³⁺ in YPO₄ phosphor was 1%, which exhibited the maximum emission intensity. The possible physical mechanism of concentration quenching was discussed, and the critical transfer distance determined to be 23.889 Å. In particular, the color purity of the as-synthesized Yb³⁺ doped YPO₄ phosphor was as high as 83%, which made it an excellent candidate for blue-emitting materials.

Keywords

blue-emitting nanophosphors / hydrothermal synthesis / luminescence / Yb³⁺ doped YPO₄

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Acknowledgements

This research was financially supported by the fund from the subject of textile science and engineering in Zhejiang Sci-Tech University as one of the Zhejiang provincial top key disciplines(Grant No. 11110531271523).

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg