Photoluminescence spectroscopies and temperature-dependent luminescence of Mn4+ in BaGe4O9 phosphor

New non-rare-earth red phosphor BaGe4O9:Mn4+ was prepared successfully via the traditional solid state reaction method. The luminescent performance was investigated by the steady-state photoluminescence (PL) and temperature-dependent PL/decay measurements. The excitation band of BaGe4O9:Mn4+ phosphor covers a broad spectral region from 250 nm to 500 nm, which matches well with the commercial near-UV and blue LEDs. The concentration quenching of Mn4+ in BaGe4O9:Mn4+ occurs at a low content of 0.5% due to the dipole-dipole interaction. We gained insight into the temperature-dependent relative emission intensity of BaGe4O9:Mn4+ phosphor, and determined the luminescence quenching temperature and the activation energy for thermal quenching (∆E) to be ~150 K and ~0.17 eV, respectively.