Preparation and characterization of Eu doped zirconia luminescent films synthesized by the pyrosol technique

Abstract

The pyrosol method is a well-known process for de- positing films [l, 21. The main advantages of this tech- nique are its low cost, a high deposition rate, the pos- sibility to coat large areas, its ease of operation and the quality of the coatings obtained. This technique has been used to deposit successfully a variety of films such as oxides, sulfides and metals [I]. Zirconia has attracted much attention in science and technology be- cause its high melting temperature, high refractive in- dex, low thermal conductivity, hardness and corrosion barrier properties [3]. Furthermore these films are use- ful in corrosion resistance applications [4], as insulat- ing layers in very large scale integrated (VLSI) cir- cuits [5], for optical coatings [6], in buffer layers for high Tc oxide superconductors [7], etc. There are also some studies on rare earth doped luminescent zirco- nia single crystals and powders [8-101. The present contribution is devoted to the preparation and char- acterization of Zr02 : Eu photoluminescent (PL) and cathodoluminescent (CL) films synthesized by the py- rosol technique. To our best knowledge, there has been no report on luminescent coatings of Zr02