Giant tunability of upconversion photoluminescence in Er3+-doped (K, Na)NbO3 single crystals

Perovskite oxides with luminescent ions hold great promise in optoelectronic devices because of their outstanding thermal stabilities and electro-optic performance. As one typical perovskite upconversion (UC) host material, lead-free potassium sodium niobate ((K, Na)NbO3/(KxNa1−x)NbO3 or KNN) has at...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nanoscale 2019-09, Vol.11 (36), p.16928-16934
Main Authors: Xue, Saidong, Deng, Hao, Xie, Qingxiu, Hu, Yuqing, Yan, Jianmin, Zhao, Xiangyong, Wang, Feifei, Zhang, Quan, Luo, Laihui, Deng, Chenguang, He, Chongjun, Lin, Di, Li, Song, Wang, Xi'an, Luo, Haosu
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Annealing
Conductivity
Crystal defects
Crystal growth
Lead free
Niobates
Optoelectronic devices
Organic chemistry
Oxygen
Perovskites
Photoluminescence
Single crystals
Sodium
Upconversion
Vacancies
Vacuum annealing
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Summary:Perovskite oxides with luminescent ions hold great promise in optoelectronic devices because of their outstanding thermal stabilities and electro-optic performance. As one typical perovskite upconversion (UC) host material, lead-free potassium sodium niobate ((K, Na)NbO3/(KxNa1−x)NbO3 or KNN) has attracted much attention in recent years. In the present work, a novel routine was developed to tune the upconversion photoluminescence (UC PL) performance by controlling the oxygen vacancy concentration in the KNN matrix, based on the 0.1% Er3+-doped KNN (Er-KNN) single crystals grown for the first time. UC PL properties, conductivity and defect chemistry of the single crystals were systematically investigated. The UC PL intensity of the as-grown Er-KNN material could be enhanced by 20 times after oxygen atmosphere annealing at 800 °C and fully quenched after vacuum annealing. What's more, by annealing under an oxygen atmosphere and vacuum, the conductivity of the Er-KNN sample was successfully tuned for more than 8 orders of magnitude. The super-wide range tunability of UC PL performance and conductivity could be explained by oxygen vacancies which gave rise to Nb5+–Nb4+ valence alternation. Because of the modulated photoluminescence properties and conductivity, our grown Er-KNN single crystals have great potential for use in multifunctional devices.
ISSN:2040-3364
2040-3372
DOI:10.1039/c9nr05817f