Synthesis of high intensity green emitting (Ba,Sr)SiO4:Eu2+ phosphors through cellulose assisted liquid phase precursor process

• The LPP method assisted with HPC can be adopted as a promising synthesizing technique.
• The green emission from the (Ba,Sr)SiO4:Eu2+ increased with the increase in viscosity and molecular weight of the template.
• Our approach is presented as an alternative synthesis of phosphor for application in white LEDs.

Green emitting phosphor (Ba1−x,Sr1−x)SiO4:2xEu2+, x = 0.03, 0.05, 0.1, and 0.15 were synthesized through a Liquid Phase Precursor Process (LPP). Liquid phase precursor method is reported to result in phosphors with markedly increased emission intensities compared to other synthesis methods. Here microcrystalline cellulose (MCC) and hydroxypropyl cellulose (HPC) templates were studied to achieve high efficiency green phosphors. The phase formation was investigated by XRD analysis which showed the conformation of the Ba2SiO4 (JCPDS card number 761631) phase. The obtained samples exhibited broad excitation spectra with maximum at 430 nm and a green emission centered around 520 nm. An optimized dopant concentration was selected and the effect of two different types of cellulose, i.e. MCC and HPC templates on the emission properties was considered. It was found that the samples synthesized using HPC and fired at 1050 °C under a reducing atmosphere, showed a high intensity of almost 2 times that of the MCC sample. Further experiments were conducted by varying viscosity, particle weight, and molecular weight of the HPC template. It was found that the green emission from the (Ba,Sr)SiO4:Eu2+ increased with the increase in viscosity and molecular weight of the template.