Recently,
there has been growing interest in developing Bi3+-activated
luminescence materials for optoelectronic applications.
Herein, new yellow/orange-emitting ABZn2Ga2O7:Bi3+ (ABZGO, A = Ca, Sr; B = Ba, Sr) phosphors
with tunable optical properties are synthesized by an alkaline earth
cation substitution. When Sr2+ substitutes Ca2+ and Ba2+, the excitation wavelength has a red shift from
325 to 363 nm, matching well with the n-UV chip based white light-emitting
diodes (WLEDs). CaBaZn2Ga2O7:0.01Bi3+ (CBZGO:0.01Bi3+) exhibits two evident emission
peaks at 570 and 393 nm originating from the respective occupation
of Ca and Ba sites by Bi3+ ions. The optical tuning of
the CBZGO:Bi3+ phosphor is achieved by changing the Bi3+ doping content and excitation wavelength based on the selected
site occupation. Differently, both SrBaZn2Ga2O7:0.01Bi3+ (SBZGO:0.01Bi3+) and
Sr2Zn2Ga2O7:0.01Bi3+ (SZGO:0.01Bi3+) phosphors exhibit a single broad
emission band, peaking at 600 and 577 nm, respectively. Two different
Bi3+ sites are also verified respectively in SBZGO and
SZGO hosts by the Gaussian fitting of the asymmetric PL spectra and
lifetime analysis. The different luminescence behaviors of ABZGO:0.01Bi3+ phosphors should be ascribed to the synergistic effect of
the centroid shift, crystal-field splitting, and Stokes shift. Moreover,
the temperature-dependent PL spectra reveal that cation substitutions
of Sr2+ for Ca2+ and Ba2+ can efficiently
improve the thermal stability of ABZGO:0.01Bi3+ phosphors.
In view of different thermal responses to various temperatures for
two emission peaks of the CBZGO:0.01Bi3+ phosphor, an optical
thermometer is designed and has a good relative sensitivity (S
r = 1.453% K–1) at 298 K.
Finally, a WLED with CRI = 97.9 and CCT = 3932 K is obtained by combining
SZGO:0.01Bi3+ and BAM:Eu2+ phosphors with a
370 nm n-UV chip, demonstrating that SZGO:0.01Bi3+ is an
excellent yellow-orange-emitting phosphor for n-UV WLED devices. This
work stimulates the exploration of optical tuning by cation substitution
to obtain remarkable luminescence materials for optical temperature
sensing and WLED applications.