Preparation of cereal-like YVO(4):Ln(3+) (Ln = Sm, Eu, Tb, Dy) for high quantum efficiency photoluminescence.

In this work, preparation of cereal-like architectures Y V O(4) and Y V O(4):Ln(3 + ) (Ln = Eu, Sm, Dy, Tb) was initiated using a hydrothermal method. During the formation reaction, Na(3)C(6)H(5)O(7).2H(2)O was used to effectively adjust the concentration of Y(3 + ) species necessary for cereal-like architectures. Phase structure, surface chemistry, morphology, and photoluminescence were characterized by x-ray powder diffraction, Fourier transformed infrared spectra, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and photoluminescence spectra. All samples crystallize in a tetragonal zircon structure, stably showing a homogeneous cereal-like morphology. This special morphology was constructed by self-assembly of tiny primary particles with a dimension of 31-32 nm. With increasing atomic number of Ln(3 + ), the lattice dimension of the cereal architectures became monotonously enlarged. This cereal-like architecture is proved unique in significantly improving the quantum efficiencies: the internal quantum efficiencies of (5)D(0) for Ln = Eu and (4)F(9/2) for Ln = Dy were 14.6% and 11.4%, respectively, which are all superior over those of the counterparts of nanoparticles reported in the literature. The average lifetime of the (5)D(0) level for Ln = Eu was calculated to be 98 micros, which is longer than that of 50 micros of the (4)F(9/2) level for Ln = Dy. The strong photoluminescence might be the consequence of the effective energy transfer due to the greatly reduced defect centers from this special self-assembly structure.