Involvement of crystallinity in various luminescent bands in yttrium aluminate

When single crystal YAlO3 was implanted with P+ or B+ ions, optical absorption increases significantly at energies slightly lower than the band gap energy, indicating that localized electronic states were induced. Furthermore, the ion implantation decreases the intensity of an X-ray diffraction peak and changes its position randomly, which indicates that the crystalline structure of the sample was deformed. The intensities of photoluminescence (PL) bands due to impurities of Cr3+ and Er3+ and those originating in self-trapped excitons and antisites become smaller or disappear after the ion implantation. On the other hand, the intensity of the PL due to oxygen vacancies does not change. Such contrasting effects of the sample’s crystallinity on the luminescence intensity are explained by the different manners of involvement of the crystal structure in the luminescence mechanism among these PLs in YAlO3.