Effect of rare earth doping on optical and spectroscopic characteristics of BaZrO3:Eu3+,Tb3+ perovskites

Abstract

This paper reports structural investigations of rare earth doped BaZrO3 phosphors synthesized by Solid state reaction technique with varying concentrations of Eu3+ and Tb3+ from 0 mol% to 2 mol%. The synthesized phosphors show enhanced variable emissions in the visible region corresponding to different hypersensitive electronic transitions of Eu3+ and Tb3+ ions. With cubic structure confirmed in XRD analysis, the FESEM images show uniform grain connectivity and homogeneity of prepared samples. The TEM micrographs of the synthesized phosphors show agglomerated irregular structures. The synthesized phosphors were also subjected to FTIR, Raman, EDXS analysis along with studies of thermoluminescent and photoluminescent characteristics. On subjecting to 229 nm (UV) excitation, the phosphors show enhanced PL emissions corresponding to 571 nm (5D0-7F0), 591 nm (5D0-7F1), 615 nm (5D0-7F2) and 678 nm (5D0-7F4) hypersensitive transitions of Eu3+ ions and emission peaks at 489 nm (5D4-7F6), 539 nm (5D4-7F5), 589 nm (5D4-7F4) and 632 nm (5D4-7F3) accounting for electronic transitions of Tb3+ ions respectively. The computed average PL lifetime is 14.014 s. In the TL analysis, the second order of kinetics with the activation energy varying from 5.0 × 10−1 eV to 6.6 × 10−1 eV is reported. The maximum TL lifetime is estimated as 19.4985 min in the TL lifetime analysis.