Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, Hungary. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be selfarchived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com".Abstract Mn 4? doped and Dy 3? , Tm 3? co-doped MgAl 2 Si 2 O 8 -based phosphors were prepared by conventional solid state reaction at 1,300°C. They were characterized by thermogravimetry, differential thermal analysis, X-ray powder diffraction, photoluminescence, and scanning electron microscopy. The luminescence mechanism of the phosphors, which showed broad red emission bands in the range of 600-715 nm and had a different maximum intensity when activated by UV illumination, was discussed. Such a red emission can be attributed to the 2 E ? 4 A 2 transitions of Mn 4? .