Novel Red‐Emitting Gd₃BW_1‐xMoxO₉ : Eu³⁺ Phosphor with High Thermal Stability for Application in UV‐Excited WLEDs and Rapid Visualization of Latent Fingerprints

Abstract

Rare‐earth‐doped inorganic luminescent materials are widely used in white light‐emitting diodes (WLEDs), lasers and forensic sciences due to their outstanding optical characteristics. However, it is still a challenge to obtain such materials with better thermal stability for application in WLEDs on account of their serious thermal quenching properties. In addition, there is still room for improvement in some respects such as higher sensitivity and contrast for application in latent fingerprint development. Herein, a series of novel Gd3BW1‐xMoxO9 : Eu3+ phosphors have been synthesized via high‐temperature solid‐state reaction process. Compared with different Mo6+ ions doping concentrations, Gd3BW0.7Mo0.3O9 : Eu3+ phosphor has optimal photoluminescence properties. Meanwhile, the emission intensity of Gd3BW0.7Mo0.3O9 : Eu3+ phosphor is over 3 times higher than that of commercial red phosphor. More impressive is its excellent resistance against thermal quenching; when heated up to 150 °C, the Gd3BW0.7Mo0.3O9 : Eu3+ phosphor still preserves about 98 % emission intensity of that at room temperature. Furthermore, the latent fingerprints (LFPs) developed by Gd3BW0.7Mo0.3O9 : Eu3+ phosphor exhibited the excellent visualization on various nonporous substrates, and level 1–3 features were well identified with high contrast and sensitivity. The obtained results suggested that the as‐prepared phosphor has great potential for application in both WLEDs and latent fingerprint detection.