Optical properties of porous YVO 4:Ln (Ln = Dy 3+ and Tm 3+) nanoplates obtained by the chemical co-precipitation method

Abstract

The present research describes a simple low-temperature synthesis route for obtention of porous YVO 4:Dy and YVO 4:Tm nanoplates via a chemical co-precipitation method using commercially available Y 2O 3, NH 4VO 3, Tm 2O 3, Dy 2O 3 and ethylene glycol as the reacting precursors. To investigate the effect of heating temperatures on the pore size and morphology of nanoplates-like powders, the as-synthesized YVO 4:Ln were thermally treated at 300 and 600 °C for 2 h which is much lower than that of the conventional preparation methods. The obtained samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and photoluminescent (PL) spectroscopy. The photoluminescence measurement revealed that the luminescence intensity was significantly increased with increasing annealing temperature that causes increase of crystallinity and pore size of the porous nanoplates. From PL spectra, it was found that porous YVO 4:Dy nanoplates have characteristic emission peaks due to the 4F 9/2 → 6H 13/2 and 4F 9/2 → 6H 15/2 emission transitions of Dy 3+. The experimental results have showed that the host YVO 4 transfers the adsorbed energy to thulium ions and strong blue emission at 475 nm assigned to 1G 4 → 3H 6 transition was observed.