Luminescence behavior of SrS:Pr3+ micron-sized phosphor fabricated through chemical co-precipitation route and post-annealing processess

Synthesis of Pr3+ doped SrS phosphor has been reported through chemical co-precipitation route employing hydrazine–sulfur solution as a source of sulfur ions and its luminescence properties are investigated in this paper. Good crystallinity and cubic SrS phase having lattice constant 5.99 nm is achieved after post-precipitation calcinations of powder at 900 °C. The morphological studies of annealed samples reveal terracing growth of micron-size particles. Photoluminescence studies reveal three excitation bands at 276, 314 and 355 nm and prominent emission line at 494 nm along with weaker emission contribution between 600 and 700 nm due to 3P0–1H4 and 3P0–3F2 transitions of Pr3+, respectively. Thermoluminescence measurements show a broad glow curve structure with maximum centered at 106.2 °C when excited with 254 nm UV radiations. Tm–Tstop method suggests the presence of four trapping levels. Computerized glow curve deconvolution tool is used to evaluate the effective trapping parameters using first-order kinetic model and suggests quasi-continuous distribution of traps having energy in the range 0.8–1.1 eV and frequency factors between 1010 and 1012/s.