Assembly of Layered Rare-Earth Hydroxide Nanosheets and SiO2 Nanoparticles to Fabricate Multifunctional Transparent Films Capable of Combinatorial Color Generation

Colloidal solutions of layered rare-earth hydroxide nanosheets provide a simple route to deposit ultra thin luminescence films. The antireflection and antifogging properties were integrated into transparent luminescent films by the layer-by-layer assembly of Eu3+, Tb3+, Dy3+ doped-hydroxocation nanosheets and negatively-charged SiO2 nanoparticles. Resulting multifunctional films exhibited efficient red, green, and blue emissions with controllable intensity. Highly improved transmittance enabled us to display combinatorial color luminescence, which can be achieved by multiply overlapping individual films with different combinations, without significant loss of transparency. Triple overlap of red/green/blue films generated an excellent white-light under 254 nm UV irradiation.