Morphology and upconversion properties of rare-earth-doped MoO3 jellyfish-like plate microarchitecture

Abstract

Here, we report the synthesis of upconversion luminescent MoO3 microplates doped with Er3+-Yb3+ ions through a simple thermal evaporation method. MoO3:Er3+/Yb3+ microplates were composed of a preferred orientation orthorhombic phase with the jellyfish-like morphology of three distinct crystallization zones. A possible growth mechanism such as casted ingot was proposed and the effects of synthesis parameters on microplate morphology were discussed. In addition, the photoluminescence spectrum indicates a strong and pure green upconversion emission under infrared laser excitation. The results demonstrate that evaporation is an effective method to synthesize rare-earth doped MoO3 upconversion materials.