Impact of Nd3+, Er3+ions on the structural, morphological and opto-electrical properties of ZrO2/La2O3doped Y2O3 ceramics

In the present work, the authors have studied double doping of Rare Earth Elements (Nd3+, Er3+) into the lattice of Y2O3 ceramic in the presence of sintering additives ZrO2+La2O3 having formula (Y0.915-xZr0.02La0.06N- d0.005Erx)2O3 where x= (0.5, 1.0, 1.5 at. %). The samples are synthesized using co-precipitation method. X-ray diffraction results reveals the formation of Y2O3 structure having cubic unit cell and matched with JCPDS card No. 41-1105. A gradual shift towards higher angle side at 2 theta = 29.2 degrees has been observed with variation in Er doping. The particle size varied from 123 nm to 52 nm with doping and has a homogenous distribution. The presence of different dopants have been confirmed by XPS. The powder mixture was sintered at 1700 degrees C for 10hrs in an inert atmosphere, though resulting in translucent pellets when measured in the range of 200-2200 nm, due to non-uniform heating and different grain size. Under the excitation of 350 nm, the samples emitted blue, green, violet and indigo colours wavelengths, confirming transition from 4F11/2 orbitals and their band gap also decreases from 5.2 eV to 4.80 eV. The sintered samples presented a dielectric constant of 15, which goes up to 18 upon increasing the concentration of Er. These results demonstrated the correlation and the effect of double doping on Y2O3 for its opto-electronic applications.