Preparation and morphology-sensitive luminescence properties of Eu3+-doped YVO4: a defect chemistry viewpoint of study†
Abstract
YVO4:Eu3+ of four different morphologies was successfully synthesized by simply varying the pH under hydrothermal conditions. Systematic characterization indicates that by increasing the pH from 3 to 14, the morphology was changed from uniform hollow microspheres, potato-cakes, microhamburgers, to lichee-like architectures in sequence, which is followed by a colour variation from wine, red-purple, pink-purple, to red. Among all the morphologies, the lichee-like shape showed a superior luminescence performance as represented by a high quantum efficiency of 55.5% and long lifetime of 1.15 ms. Such a morphology-sensitive luminescence property was first interpreted in terms of the defect chemistry. The findings reported in this work are fundamentally important, which may give a deep insight into the origin of morphology-dependent properties necessary for exploring new luminescent materials.