Investigations on the synthesis dependent luminescence property of LiGdF4: Eu3+ microcrystals

Lanthanide ion doped inorganic crystals have attracted appreciable interest due to their distinct properties such as high luminescence efficiency, photo-chemical stability which explored their commercialization in display and illumination devices. In this work, LiGdF4 has chosen as a host for doping Eu3+ as it posses low phonon energy and chemical stability. Initially, LiGdF4: Eu phosphor is synthesized using modified solid state reaction method with varying temperature from 500°C to 800°C. X-ray diffraction analysis showed the synthesized microcrystals are in tetragonal structure with observation of impure phase at lower temperature which disappeared as the temperature increased. Ball milling of the sample synthesized at 600 °C has been performed at different hours. Photoluminescence of the samples are analyzed with UV excitation of 273 nm. Sharp green luminescence is observed for all samples and the intensity is found to get decreased with reduction of crystallinity of the samples during ball milling.