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The luminescence properties of Dy
3+
activated
SrB
4
O
7
under VUV excitation
Jing Gou,Yuhua Wang
*
,Feng Li
Department of Material Science,Lanzhou University,Lanzhou (730000)
E-mail:gouj05@lzu.cn,wyh@lzu.edu.cn,fli02@st.lzu.edu.cn
Abstract
Dy
3+
doped SrB
4
O
7
phosphors were synthesized by solid state reaction. The luminescence properties of
white-light SrB
4
O
7
:Dy
3+
under VUV excitation were firstly investigated. According to strong
absorption around 147 nm in excitation spectra, energy can easily be transferred to the energy levels of
Dy
3+
from host absorption, so that the luminescence of SrB
4
O
7
:Dy
3+
under VUV excitation was
effective, and it was potential to be applied to a white lamp-house for mercury-free lamp.
Keywords:VUV,phosphor,luminescence,mercury-free lamp
1. Introduction
Nowadays, rare-earth-ion-activated phosphors are applied to various fields, e.g., fluorescent lamps,
display devices, detector systems, immunoassays and scintillates of phosphor marking, etc [1-4]. In
these devices, luminescent materials absorb the energy and then convert it to visible light. However,
there is a challenge in the field of luminescent materials of rare-earths in the vacuum ultraviolet (VUV)
region (λ﹤200 nm, energy ﹥50000 cm
-1
). Rare-earth (RE) ions doped borate-based phosphors has
been applied for various fields, such as plasma display panels (PDP) and visible lasers, because of its
many advantages such as high non-linear optical coefficient and strong absorption in VUV/UV region,
well environment durability, chemical stability and optical properties [4,5]. Besides above excellence
of borate-based phosphors, strontium tetraborate SrB
4
O
7
has more wonderfully value, such as
thermoluminescent dosimetric characteristics, relative lower cost, lower synthesis temperature, relative
easier preparation and nonhygroscopicity, so that it has been investigated applied to ultrafast diagnostic
and pressure optical sensor [6,7] and SrB
4
O
7
:Dy
3+
has been studied using the thermoluminescent
technique to investigate their potential applications for high-dose β-ray dosimetry [8]. Dy
3+
has two
dominant bands in the emission spectrum in many host matrixes such as Ba
3
Gd(PO
4
)
3
,
Mg
2
Gd
8
(SiO
4
)
6
O
2
[9, 11]. The band located at 574 nm (yellow) attributes to the hypersensitive
transition
4
F
9/2
-
6
H
13/2
(△L=2, △J=2), and another band located at 487 nm (blue) corresponds to the
transition
4
F
9/2
-
6
H
15/2
. The intensity of the former varies with the environment more obviously than the
latter’s. In the CIE 1931 chromaticity diagram, the line linking the yellow and blue wavelength cross
the white light region, therefore adjust a suitable yellow-to-blue intensity ratio (Y/B), the chromaticity
coordinates of the phosphor doped with Dy
3+
could be controlled in the white region. There are several
reports about the phosphors with Dy
3+
, which were studied for directly white light produced [9-11]. In
this work, the photoluminescence of SrB
4
O
7
: Dy
3+
is evaluated under the excitation of VUV was firstly
investigated.
2. Experimental
Powder samples Sr
1-x
B
4
O
7
:xDy
3+
, were prepared by solid state reactions. The purities of SrCO
3
,
H
3
BO
3
are A.R., and that of Dy
2
O
3
is better than 99.99%. The doping amount x of Dy
2
O
3
is from 0 to
10%. Stoichiometric amounts of the starting reagents SrCO
3
, H
3
BO
3
and Dy
2
O
3
were thoroughly mixed
and ground together; a 10% excess of the boric acid was used to compensate for the evaporation of the
boric acid at high temperature in solid state reactions. The mixture was heated at 500°C for 2h,
reground and reheated at the temperature of 900°C for 1.5h.
The X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) patterns of all samples were carefully collected in the 2θ range