Lanthanide Doped Cubic Boron Nitride

Abstract

ABSTRACTFirst basic investigations on lanthanide implanted cubic boron nitride were performed with focus on the site of the implanted ions as well as their luminescence behaviour. In order to investigate the lattice sites of lanthanides in c-BN, we implanted single crystal c-BN with radioactive 139Ce ions using the on-line isotope separator ISOLDE at CERN. After the samples were annealed at 1193 K, direct lattice location studies were performed using the conversion electron emission channeling technique and showed a near-substitutional fraction of the implanted ions of at least 10 %. Additionally, poly crystalline c-BN samples were implanted with stable Eu and Tm ions in order to investigate the luminescence properties of triply ionised lanthanides in the c-BN host. It is found that the annealing of the implanted samples at high temperature and high pressure results in strong luminescence of the Eu3+ ions in the orange and moderate luminescence of the Tm3+ ions in the blue. In case of the Eu implanted samples, the luminescence is assigned to the 5D0-7FJ intra-4f electron transitions of Eu3+, in case of the Tm implanted samples, detectable transitions are 1D2-3H6, 1D2-3F4, 1G4-3H6. of Tm3+.