Morphology-controlled synthesis, growth mechanism and fluorescence of YF3:Eu3+, Bi3+

Abstract

In recent years, morphology-controlled synthesis and corresponding property tuning in inorganic materials have attracted considerable attention. In this work, lanthanide luminescent materials of YF3:0.125Eu3+, 0.5%Bi3+ with a variety of well-defined morphologies including spherical, truncated octahedron, octahedron and pseudo-sphere particle have been controllably synthesized via a facile hydrothermal method. Phase structure and morphology of the materials are tuned, and thus fluorescent properties are tailored by changing the synthetic parameters of reaction temperature and dwelling time. With increasing reaction temperature, the materials are transformed from KY3F10 to YF3, and the morphology varies from spherical to octahedron and finally truncated octahedra. When dwelling time increases, the samples also extend from KY3F10 to YF3 and the morphology changes from spherical to octahedron, then truncated octahedra and finally pseudo-sphere particle. The possible growth mechanism for diverse morphologies has been proposed. The fluorescence intensity of the materials is closely related to their morphologic characteristics. The YF3:0.125Eu3+, 0.5%Bi3+ with truncated octahedra synthesized at 200°C for 18h presents the strongest emission intensity because of its less defects sites and large grain size. In addition, it has been demonstrated that the present luminescent materials can be potentially used as the luminescent ink.