Abstract
Luminescent materials with dynamic photoluminescence activity have aroused special interest because of their potential widespread applications. One proposed approach of directly and reversibly modulating the photoluminescence emissions is by means of introducing an external electric field in an in-situ and real-time way, which has only been focused on thin films. In this work, we demonstrate that real-time electric field-induced photoluminescence modulation can be realized in a bulk Ba0.85Ca0.15Ti0.90Zr0.10O3 ferroelectric ceramic doped with 0.2 mol% Pr3+, owing to its remarkable polarization reversal and phase evolution near the morphotropic phase boundary. Along with in-situ X-ray diffraction analysis, our results reveal that an applied electric field induces not only typical polarization switching and minor crystal deformation, but also tetragonal-to-rhombohedral phase transformation of the ceramic. The electric field-induced phase transformation is irreversible and engenders dominant effect on photoluminescence emissions as a result of an increase in structural symmetry. After it is completed in a few cycles of electric field, the photoluminescence emissions become governed mainly by the polarization switching, and thus vary reversibly with the modulating electric field. Our results open a promising avenue towards the realization of bulk ceramic-based tunable photoluminescence activity with high repeatability, flexible controllability, and environmental-friendly chemical process.
Highlights
Rapid and reversible manipulations of photoluminescence (PL) activity in luminescent materials have attracted much attention due to wide applications, including long-distance quantum communication, photonic devices, volumetric 3D display, back light, and biomedicine[1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
The X-ray diffraction (XRD) pattern of the BCTZ:Pr ceramic is shown in Fig. 2a, revealing a pure perovskite structure of the ceramic
Regarding the fact that the BCTZ ceramic derives from morphotropic phase boundary (MPB) with the coexistence of tetragonal (P4mm) and rhombohedral phases (R3m) around room temperature[26,40], there is no visible evidence of the splitting of (200) peak at 2θ~ 45° (Fig. 2a)
Summary
Rapid and reversible manipulations of photoluminescence (PL) activity in luminescent materials have attracted much attention due to wide applications, including long-distance quantum communication, photonic devices, volumetric 3D display, back light, and biomedicine[1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. The modulation of PL is commonly achieved by adjusting the composition of host materials and/or doping various rare-earth ions (RE3+) via chemical approach in phosphor[5,8,9,10] These approaches are irreversible and not favorable for practical applications. They provide no opportunities to elaborate the mutative PL process, which is essential for exploring the underlying physical mechanism In this regard, an in-situ and real-time approach for PL modulation has been proposed by applying an external electric field on specific host materials such as organic thin films[11,12] and ferroelectric titanate films[2,13,14]. Inspired by its remarkable polarization reversal and phase revolution around room temperature, BCTZ is chosen as the ferroelectric host in this work for providing a considerable change in structural symmetry under electric field. The ferroelectric and piezoelectric properties of the host materials can be improved by the doping of Pr29,39
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