Luminescence properties of Eu2+, Gd3+ and Pr3+ doped translucent Sialon phosphors

Optical properties of hot pressed Sialon ceramics doped with different rare earth oxides (REOs) i.e. Eu2O3, Gd2O3, and Pr2O3 were investigated. The alpha-Sialon phase was the main phase obtained after sintering as observed by X-ray diffraction (XRD). The transparency of different samples of varying thickness measured from UV to IR region revealed that the samples were translucent in the visible region while transparent in IR region. The thin samples of 150 mu m thickness had transmittance as high as 30% in the visible region. The luminescence was observed in transmittance mode to investigate the effect of sample thickness on luminescence intensity. We observed blue, yellow and red emissions in Sialon doped with Gd2O3, Eu2O3, and Pr2O3, respectively. The excitation wavelength for Gd2O3 and Pr2O3 doped samples were in UV region i. e. 280 and 270 nm, respectively, whereas, for Eu2O3 doped samples was in the blue region (460 nm). The Eu2O3 doped Sialon having 300 mu m thickness showed better white light extraction as coupled with blue LED. Moreover, the fabricated phosphor samples exhibited high hardness around 20 GPa and fracture toughness above 5 MPa.m(1/2).