X‐Ray Luminescence, Photoluminescence, and Radiation Shielding Properties of Europium‐Doped Oxide Glasses for Red Light‐Emitting Device Applications

Abstract

Lanthanide-doped glasses have shown fascinating features in a variety of applications over the past few decades, ranging from everyday materials to advanced technologies. Glass material fabrication is appealing because of its superior transparency, better homogeneity, and desired shapes, as well as its wide range of applications, including light-emitting devices, optoelectronic devices, shielding materials, scintillation materials, nonlinear optics, lasers, optical fibers, and sensors. [1][2][3] B 2 O 3 glasses were chosen as ideal formers due to their low melting point, good transparency and shielding qualities, and high durability. [4] B 2 O 3 has the ability to accept a higher concentration of dopant ions. Borate glasses have a wide range of commercial applications. Aluminum is used in high-power laser applications and to modify the structure of glass. Fluoride reduces the phonon energy and de-excites nonradiative phonon that gives high intense emissions and makes them useful for fiber amplification. [5][6][7][8] The addition of Na 2 O [1,3] and BaO [4,5] enhances the physical and luminescence properties of glasses. The lanthanide series is fascinating due to its 4f-4f transition, low-lying energy, and nondegenerate levels between 7 F 0 and 5 D 0 . Lanthanides are used to modify the optical and physical qualities of glass. Especially europium is interesting because it shows the occurrence of phonon side bands connected with 5 D 0 ! 7 F 2 transition of excitation spectrum on the higher energy state. Due to high emission, Eu 3þ ions doped borate glasses are used in luminescent materials as well as in highpower laser systems and sensors which have good magneto-optical properties. [9][10][11] Due to the shielding effect generated by fully occupied 5s and 5p electrons on the 4f inner electrons, they show susceptibility to the ligand field and site symmetry of the host matrices resulting in electron-phonon coupling. [12] Also, the rare-earth ion Eu 3þ is being topic of interest as they show narrow emission bands and a long radiative lifetime when doped in glasses [13] luminescence occurs due to 4f-4f electronic transitions are characterized by the narrow emission and absorption bands, host-independent transition energies.