Luminescence properties of Eu3+ in gadolinium molybdate β′-Gd2Mo3O12 phosphors

In this paper, we report the synthesis and photoluminescence (PL) properties of β′-Gd2Mo3O12 doped with Eu3+ ions. The relationship between Eu3+ luminescence versus concentration and temperature is discussed. In order to investigate the mechanism of concentration quenching, luminescence decay curves are measured and the Inokuti–Hirayama model is used to analyze them. The activation energy for the thermal quenching is estimated by the Arrhenius fitting. The emission spectrum of β′-Gd2Mo3O12 exhibits the strongest emission peak at 614.5 nm due to electric–dipole transition. The excitation spectrum shows several sets of lines in the range of 350–425 nm which are associated with the typical intra-configurational 4f6 transitions of Eu3+. The spectral positions of these lines match well with the emission spectra of near-UV LEDs, which makes the phosphor find a potential application for white light-emitting-diodes.