Preparation, luminescence properties and electronic structure of RE (RE=Eu3+,Sm3+,Dy3+)-doped multi-color silico-phosphate Ca15(PO4)2(SiO4)6 phosphors

Abstract

To explore new white-light-emitting luminescent materials, a series of multi-color phosphors Ca15(PO4)2(SiO4)6:RE (RE = Eu3+,Sm3+,Dy3+) were successfully prepared by using high temperature solid-state reaction. The calculated electronic structure used by first-principles method predicts that the matrix belongs to a wide bandgap material, which is suitable to achieve the incorporation of various rare earth ions. Excited under near UV light, the phosphors exhibit red light emission with a main peak at 621 nm, orange-red light emission at 603 nm and white light emission with two peaks at 484 nm and 578 nm for Eu3+, Sm3+ and Dy3+ doped Ca15(PO4)2(SiO4)6, respectively. Specially, Ca15(PO4)2(SiO4)6 phosphor can achieve white light emission by doping single rare earth Dy3+ ions. The thermal stabilities of three doped phosphors were measured and their emission intensities maintained more than 88% at 150 °C, which indicates the silico-phosphate phosphors have an excellent thermal stability. The results illuminate that as-prepared Ca15(PO4)2(SiO4)6:RE (RE = Eu3+,Sm3+,Dy3+) phosphors not only achieve multi-color light emission, but also exhibit great potential application in the field of UV or blue based white light-emitting diodes.