Structural and photoluminescent elucidation of the efficient green emitting erbium doped BaY2ZnO5 nanophosphor for light emitting materials

Erbium doped BaY2ZnO5 nanophosphor was synthesized by solution combustion approach using urea as an organic fuel. The spherical shaped phosphors in the nano dimension (40-70 nm) were characterized by X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy and photoluminescence spectroscopy. XRD studies reveal that in BaY1.92Er0.08ZnO5 nano phosphor substitution of Y3+ ion by Er3+ ion does not lead to any major structural changes in the host lattice and confirms single phased nanophosphor crystallized in orthorhombic lattice with Pbnm (62) space group. The excitation spectrum depicts that this nanophosphor can be effectively excited by NUV light, resulting characteristic emissions from H-2(9/2), H-2(11/2), S-4(3/2) to I-4(15/2) transition level with predominant green emission at 549 nm. Concentration dependent luminescence tendency reveals optimized concentration for maximum luminescence as 4 mol%. A larger value of critical distance (14.38 ) is found responsible for non-radiative energy transfer occurring via dipole-quadrupole (d-q) interactions leading to concentration quenching. Luminescence decay kinetics and color coordinates (0.283, 0.616) has also been evaluated. The findings of the study support the application of this nanophosphor in the field of NUV excited tricolor based PC-white LED systems.