Luminescence, energy transfer and tunable white emitting of borosilicate glass doubly doped with Tb/Sm or triply doped with Ce/Tb/Sm for white LEDs

•Borosilicate glass doped with Ce, Tb and Sm ions was designed and investigated.•Influence of rare-earth doping on controllable luminescence and color was revealed.•Energy transfers from Tb3+ to Sm3+ results from the dipole–dipole interactions.•Blue, green and orange colors are observed in one host under an UV excitation.•White light emitting was realized and adjusted by the composition modification. The Ce3+, Tb3+ and Sm3+ doubly and/or triply doped borosilicate glass was designed to reveal the influence of rare-earth (RE) dopants on their controllable and adjustable structure, luminescence and color. The Tb/Sm doubly doped glass presents the green and orange emissions of Tb3+ (545 nm, 5D4 → 7F5) and Sm3+ (603 nm, 4G5/2 → 6H7/2) under 375 nm excitation. The energy transfers (ET) from Tb3+ to Sm3+ were determined when the Sm concentration increases, and the transfer efficiency (ηET) was calculated to be up to 15.85% when Tb and Sm concentration is 0.75 mol% and 1.0 mol%, respectively. It is concluded that the dipole–dipole interactions between ions are essential to the ET process in Tb/Sm doubly doped samples. Furthermore, the PL spectra of Ce/Tb/Sm triply doped samples include the characteristic transitions which can realize the combined color of blue, green and red to white-emitting in one host.