Full colour luminescence tuning including white light from a mixed lanthanide activated metal-organic complex

Abstract

In an attempt, metal–organic compounds of rare earth ions with 2,6-pyridinedicarboxylic acid (H2pydc) were synthesized and characterized. This paper summarizes the synthesis, characterization, and multicolour luminescence behaviour of a europium and terbium co-doped metal–organic compound (MOC) of formula [Y1.972Eu0.013Tb0.014(pydcH)6]·3H2O, 1 {H2pydc = 2,6-pyridinedicarboxylic acid}. The synthesis was performed by simple solvent evaporation method. We have also synthesized a pure yttrium based compound [Y2(pydcH)6]·3H2O, 1a following a similar procedure. The powder XRD patterns indicated that 1 and 1a were new materials; the patterns being entirely consistent with the simulated XRD pattern generated based on the structure of pure Eu compound determined using the single-crystal XRD. Compound 1 was well characterized by SEM, IR, TGA, EDX, and EDX elemental mapping analysis. Compound 1 showed different colour upon the variation of the excitation wavelength from 260 nm to 385 nm.