Abstract
This article showed and explained the effects of the Cu2+ ions on the structural and photoluminescent properties of Ce3+ doped ZnO compounds (ZnO: Ce3+) in Cu2+ + Ce3+ co-doped ZnO (ZnO: Cu2+ + Ce3+) solid solutions powders. The samples were synthesized by a solution combustion method maintaining the Ce3+ ion concentration constant in 3%wt and varying the Cu2+ ion concentration in 0%wt, 1%wt, 2%wt, 3%wt, 10%wt and 20%wt. However, pristine ZnO and Ce3+ doped ZnO were synthesized by the same method for comparison. After the synthesis process all the samples were annealed at 900°C by 24 h. The pure ZnO, ZnO: Ce3+ and ZnO/Cu2+ + Ce3 powders were structurally characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD) technique, the XRD patterns showed that for either undoped and doped with the Cu2+ ion both exhibited the hexagonal wurtzite ZnO crystalline structure, also the diffraction peaks of both samples types showed a little change toward lesser angles. The morphology and particle size of the samples were observed by means of a scanner electron microscopy (SEM); from SEM imagen is observed that the crystallites of the samples are agglomerated forming cage-like hollow structures caused by the combustion process. The cage-like structures have approximate size of 800 nm. In addition, the photoluminescence of pure ZnO, ZnO: Ce3+and ZnO: Cu2+ + Ce3+ compounds was measurement as a function of Cu2+ ion concentration under a excitation wavelength of 378 nm in the UV region. As an important result, it is observed that by Auger phenomena of non-radiative recombination, the UV emission of the ZnO is quenching.
Highlights
There are a lot of scientific literature on the II-VI semiconductor material zinc oxide (ZnO) produced by researchers dedicated to the physical optical study in all the world, because the ZnO has singular and extraordinary physical and chemical properties: presents a wide direct band gap of 3.37 eV at room temperature [1] and has bonding energy of 60 meV that makes ZnO very apt for exciton-based applications [2]
Between the ZnO dopants the most prominent is the cerium atom (Ce3+), the first element of the lanthanide series due to its high PL emission efficiency and wide versatility: according to the studies realized by various researchers [24]-[29], from your experimental results the authors show that the Ce3+ doped ZnO can presents anomalous PL emission spectra: from the UV radiation until the red color emissions; this multiple color PL emission is attributed to the Ce3+ ion and depend of the excitation radiation of illumination
From the X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns can be observed that all the diffraction peaks can be indexed to the hexagonal wurtzite ZnO structure (JCPDS CARD #89-(102)), no change of the peaks toward lesser angles was observed: the Cu2+ ion incorporation into the ZnO crystalline lattice do not changed the ZnO basic structure
Summary
There are a lot of scientific literature on the II-VI semiconductor material zinc oxide (ZnO) produced by researchers dedicated to the physical optical study in all the world, because the ZnO has singular and extraordinary physical and chemical properties: presents a wide direct band gap of 3.37 eV at room temperature [1] and has bonding energy of 60 meV that makes ZnO very apt for exciton-based applications [2]. Such properties make to the ZnOa very versatile material ideal for working in conjunction with other materials. Your photoluminescence properties were studied by measuring its PL under an excitation wavelength of 378 nm at room temperature
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