Morphology Manipulation and Upconversion Luminescence Enhancement of β-NaLuF4: Er3+ Hexagonal Microtubes via Sr2+ Doping

A new and facile strategy to enhance the upconversion luminescence (UCL) emission of NaLuF4: Er3+ microcrystals (MCs) using strontium (Sr) as a dopant has been reported. With the introduction of Sr2+, the products change from long NaLuF4: Er3+ hexagonal microtubes to short hexagonal microtubes and finally to hexagonal microprisms. The growth mechanism is profoundly discussed according to the different reaction time-dependent morphologies. More importantly, the total fluorescence intensity is significantly reinforced by doping Sr2+ ions. When 18% Sr2+ is doped into NaLuF4: Er3+ hexagonal microtubes, the maximum green and red luminescence intensities are about 5.8 and 4.4 times higher than those of Sr2+-free samples, respectively. The influences of Sr2+ ion doping content on the phase, the morphology, and the local crystal field symmetry of the as-synthesized NaLuF4 crystals are investigated.

Upconversion Luminescence Properties of Er3+ Doped Yb2Ti2O7 Nanophosphor by Gd3+ Codoping

Er3+ doped Yb2Ti2O7 nanophosphors by Gd3+ codoping with nominal composition of (Er0.05Yb0.95−xGdx)2Ti2O7 (x = 0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, and 0.95) have been prepared by sol–gel method. −Er3+–Gd3+ codoped Yb2Ti2O7 was characteristic of a typical face-centered cubic crystal phase, and the unit cell parameter increased linearly with the increase of Gd3+ concentration. Under a 976 nm laser diode excitation, both green and red upconversion emissions were observed and the upconversion emissions were enhanced significantly by Gd3+ codoping, showing the strongest green and red emissions at 80 mol% Gd3+ codoping. The intensity ratio of green to red emissions (Igreen/Ired) increased monotonously with the increase of Gd3+ concentration. The energy transfer between Yb3+ and Er3+ and the variation of local crystal field symmetry of Er3+ by the substitution of Yb3+ by Gd3+ ions led to the improvement of upconversion properties of Er3+–Gd3+ codoped Yb2Ti2O7 nanophosphors.

EPR of Gd3+ in a Single Crystal of Thorium disulfide (ThS2)

In this paper we report the experimental angular behaviour of the EPR spectra for a single crystal of Thorium disulfide (ThS2) doped with Gd3+ at very low concentration (of the order of 10 p.p.m.). The experimental data are interpreted in terms of a spin Hamiltonian which reflects the crystal field symmetry at the Th site, that is monoclinic Cs, and therefore shows that the doping ions enter substitutionally without lowering the site symmetry. The low symmetry and the unusually large values of the crystal field parameters b20 and b22 have made it necessary to use a numerical fitting procedure, starting from the exact numerical diagonalization of the energy matrix for any given direction of the static magnetic field.