Structural, magnetic and up-conversion properties of YF3: Yb/Ln (Ln = Er, Tm, Ho) solid solutions

Abstract

In this paper, we investigated YF3: Yb/Er, YF3: Yb/Tm, and YF3: Yb/Ho solid solutions prepared by reaction of an appropriate amount of oxides with ammonium difluoride (NH4HF2) as a fluorinating agent. These samples were characterized by Xray diffraction (XRD), magnetic measurements, and up-conversion (UC) photoluminescence spectra. The results show that all samples are single-phase and crystallize in an orthorhombic crystal structure of the ?-YF3 structure type. Above 100 K, the measured molar magnetic susceptibility was fitted by the Curie-Weiss law and the average effective magnetic moments for the observed samples were obtained. All the samples showed pure paramagnetic behavior. When doped with lanthanide elements (Yb/Er, Yb/Tm, Yb/Ho), YF3 solid solutions can emit characteristic green, red, blue, and near IR light under the excitation of a 980 nm laser diode.