Negative thermal expansion and broad band photoluminescence in a novel material of ZrScMo2VO12

In this paper, we present a novel material with the formula of ZrScMo 2 VO 12 for the first time. It was demonstrated that this material exhibits not only excellent negative thermal expansion (NTE) property over a wide temperature range (at least from 150 to 823 K), but also very intense photoluminescence covering the entire visible region. Structure analysis shows that ZrScMo 2 VO 12 has an orthorhombic structure with the space group Pbcn (No. 60) at room temperature. A phase transition from monoclinic to orthorhombic structure between 70 and 90 K is also revealed. The intense white light emission is tentatively attributed to the n- and p-type like co-doping effect which creates not only the donor- and acceptor-like states in the band gap, but also donor-acceptor pairs and even bound exciton complexes. The excellent NTE property integrated with the intense white-light emission implies a potential application of this material in light emitting diode and other photoelectric devices.