Room temperature photoluminescence from Zr4+-doped sol–gel silica

✍ Scribed by Haiping He; Yuxia Wang; Yi Wang; Youming Zou; Zheng Chen; Shuai Yuan

• Book ID: 104166131
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2003
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 136 KB
• Volume: 126
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0038-1098
• DOI: 10.1016/s0038-1098(03)00276-x

✦ Synopsis

Intense room-temperature photoluminescence (PL) from the UV to the green region was observed from Zr 4þ -doped silica synthesized by a sol-gel process using tetraethoxysilane as the precursor, followed by thermal treatment at 500 8C in air. The wide PL band can be resolved into three components centered at 3.70, 3.25, and 2.65 eV, respectively. The intensity of the 3.25 and 2.65 eV PL bands was greatly enhanced compared with pure sol -gel silica. The 3.70 eV emission was assigned to nonbridging oxygen hole centers, while the 2.65 eV one originated from neutral oxygen vacancies ðV O Þ: The 3.25 eV PL band was most likely associated with E 0 centers, as supported by electron spin resonance measurement. It was proposed that the Zr 4þdoping leads to oxygen deficiency in the silica, thus resulting in enhancement of the density of V O and E 0 center defects.