The growing demand for luminescent nanomaterials intended for various applications increases the necessity to develop and improve approaches to the creation of highly efficient nanosized phosphors. In current study, an approach to enhancing the efficiency of red luminescence of monoclinic Y2O3:Eu3+ with the particle size of ∼20 nm by creating the oxygen-enriched environment during the gas-phase synthesis was developed. To investigate the effect of oxygen amount during the synthesis on characteristics of the phosphor, a series of nanostructured Y2O3:Eu3+ with the addition of 0–40 vol% O2 to the main buffer gas Ar was synthesized by laser vaporization. It is shown that the amount of added O2 exerts virtually no effect on the phase composition and particle size, but significantly improves the luminescent characteristics of Y2O3:Eu3+. Thus, the addition of 30 vol% O2 leads to virtually a 20-fold growth in the photoluminescence (PL) intensity caused by 5D0→7F0–4 transitions in Eu3+ and an increase in the absolute PL quantum yield from 3% to 53% (λex = 395 nm) compared to the sample synthesized without O2. The addition of oxygen also improves the emission color coordinates from (0.571, 0.320) to (0.630, 0.322) due to the removal of a considerable fraction of oxygen vacancies. The synthesized nanopowders are shown to be highly stable: upon storage under ambient conditions for two years. Quantum yield (QY) of the samples decreases by less than 2%. It is expected that the key features underlying the proposed approach will be useful for various methods used to synthesize oxide nanophosphors.

中文翻译：

---

在合成过程中创造富氧环境，作为改善 Y2O3：Eu3+ 发光性能的有效方法


对用于各种应用的发光纳米材料的需求不断增长，这增加了开发和改进制造高效纳米尺寸荧光粉的方法的必要性。在目前的研究中，开发了一种通过在气相合成过程中创造富氧环境来提高粒径为 ∼20 nm 的单斜晶系 Y2O3：Eu3+ 的红光发光效率的方法。为了研究合成过程中氧量对荧光粉特性的影响，通过激光汽化合成了一系列纳米结构的 Y2O3：Eu3+，并在主缓冲气体 Ar 中添加了 0–40 vol% O2。结果表明，添加的 O 2 量对相组成和粒径几乎没有影响，但显着改善了 Y2O3：Eu3+ 的发光特性。因此，与不含 O2 的样品相比，添加 30 vol% O2 会导致 Eu3+ 中 5D0→7F0–4 跃迁引起的光致发光 （PL） 强度几乎增长 20 倍，并且绝对 PL 量子产率从 3% 增加到 53% （λex = 395 nm）。由于去除了相当一部分氧空位，氧的添加还将发射色坐标从 （0.571， 0.320） 提高到 （0.630， 0.322）。合成的纳米粉末在环境条件下储存两年后表现出高度稳定性。样品的量子产率 （QY） 降低不到 2%。预计所提出的方法背后的关键特征将可用于合成氧化物纳米荧光粉的各种方法。