Photoluminescence of nano-scaled YAG:Ce phosphor powders

Four series of YAG:Ce phosphor powders were synthesized by solid state, co-precipitation, and sol-gel (with two different growth inhibitors, HMDS and PAA respectively) methods, which results in the average particle sizes of 800, 56, 43, and 32 nm respectively. All the nano-scale YAG powders were heat treated below 1000_. Both TEM and XRD results of these nano-scale YAG powders show high degree of crystalline structure. Photoluminescence (PL) characterization shows that the nano-scale YAG phosphor powders emit a higher intensity of luminescence than that of sub-micro sized samples. The effect of different Ce doping level on the PL of (Y_3-xCe_x)Al₅O₁₂ shows a maximum at x ∼ 0.01. The Commission International de I'Eclairage (CIE) chromaticity coordinates were determined and show different trends of shifts in the resulting PL spectra. Systematic study of the processing parameters characterized by DTA/TGA, XRD, FTIR, and BET will be discussed in detail in the report.