Unexplored Thermal Transformation Behavior of Two-Dimensionally Bound Gadolinium Hydroxide Layers: Fabrication of Oriented Crystalline Films of Gadolinium Oxychloride Nanosheets Suitable for the Multicolor Luminescence with Color Tunability

Annealing multilayers of gadolinium hydroxide leads to the growth of gadolinium oxychloride crystallites film through a two-dimensionally confined process. The employment of a confined crystallization process creates a multi-layer film composed of mixed crystallites each doped with different activator ions, such as Eu3+ and Tb3+, which demonstrates a novel method of fabricating robust and semi-transparent inorganic thin films with multicolor emission capacity and color tunability.