Facile fabrication and luminescent properties enhancement of bimodal Y2O3:Eu3+ particles by simultaneous Gd3+ codoping

Recently, lanthanide doped bifunctional phosphor materials have begun to play important roles in biomedical applications. On the other hand, little effort has been made to develop systems with paramagnetic and luminescent properties combined in a single particle. In this study, nearly-uniform versatile bifunctional yttria Y2O3 codoped with luminescent Eu3+ and paramagnetic Gd3+ systems (∼150–200 nm in diameter) were synthesized using a facile urea homogeneous precipitation method. We demonstrated that partial replacing of Y3+ with Gd3+ linearly improves the strongest red 612 nm emission associated with 5D0 → 7F2 transition of Eu3+. Therefore, codoping yttria based red luminescent phosphors with Gd3+ resulted to enhancement of red luminescent emission together with paramagnetic functionality of the prepared composite particles. The uniform and well-dispersed particles obtained in this study are expected to find promising applications in a range of areas.

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► Phosphors exhibiting both paramagnetic and luminescent properties were synthesized.
► Codoping with Gd3+ enhanced the luminescent efficiency of the Y2O3:Eu3+ phosphors.
► The approach presented in this study can be easily extended to other codoped systems.