Glycine-assisted hydrothermal synthesis of YPO4:Eu3+ nanobundles

In this paper, large-scale YPO4:Eu3+ nanobundles with uniform diameter were controllably synthesized by a glycine-assisted hydrothermal method at 150 degrees C using Y(NO3)(3), Eu(NO3)(3) and (NH4)(3)PO4 as the precursors. During the synthetic procedure of inorganic rare earth luminescent nanomaterials, glycine was firstly chosen as the complexing and surface-functionalizing agent. X-ray diffraction (XRD) results show that the luminescent nanobundles are pure tetragonal structure and no other impurity phase appeared. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and selected area electron diffraction (SAED) studies indicate that the YPO4:Eu3+ nanobundles are polycrystalline structure with a narrow size distribution. Photoluminescence(PL) spectra results demonstrate that the YPO4:Eu3+ nanobundles have two strong D-5(0)-> F-7(1)(591 nm) and D-5(0)-> F-7(2)(618 nm) transition peaks corresponding to orange-red and red color, respectively. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.