Structural origins, tunable photoluminescence governed by impurities and white-light irradiation in transparent Pr3+:BaTiO3 glass-ceramics

Abstract

The active construction of glass network and the fine tuning of crystal phase transition caused by alkali-impurity manipulation and white-light irradiation are expected as efficient tactics to engineer desirable optical materials. Herein, transparent Pr³⁺:BaTiO₃ glass-ceramics were successfully fabricated by melting for the first time. Moreover, the substitution of alkali K⁺ for Na⁺ was proven to be an efficient method to regroup the glass network and regulate the crystal phase in this system. The results showed that K⁺-rich glass and glass-ceramics exhibited notable fluorescence characteristics, and the emission intensity enhancement factor reached an order of magnitude in the visible band. In particular, due to the influence of the photovoltaic effect, the light-irradiated glass-ceramics exhibited 1.59-fold attenuation of down-conversion emission after manipulation for 2 hours. These remarkable phenomena exploit realistic pathways for developing optoelectronic devices in future.