Z. Qiu et al. / Journal of Alloys and Compounds 583 (2014) 335–339
337
transition is impossibility. Consequently, it is believed that Ce3+ ions
are partially as deoxidizer, and partially as sensitizer for Eu2+ ions.
As we already know, with temperature rising, CaCO3 decom-
posed to CaO at first. Then CaZnOS was formed through a combina-
tion of CaO and ZnS. Keep the temperature climbing up beyond
1370 K and the equilibrium of formula (4) would be shifted toward
the right side substantially. Meanwhile, the drastic decomposition
of ZnO and zinc vaporization grew up under H2/N2. As a result,
phase-pure CaS was formed:
CaCO3 þ ZnS þ 0:05%Eu2O3 þ H2 ! CaS : 0:1%Eu2þ þ Zn
" þ1=2O2 " þCO2 " þH2O "
ð4Þ
where H2 was supplied by 5%H2/95%N2 flow and considered as the
reductant for Eu3+ ions as well as an assistant for decomposition of
ZnO. The excitation and emission spectra of the as-obtained
CaS:Eu2+ samples make no odds with those reported phosphors
[2,8,26]. It indicates that the method in this paper can provide a
new strategy to synthesize calcium sulfide based material.
Fig. 3. Excitation and emission spectra of CaZnOS (A), CaZnOS:Eu2+,Ce3+ (B),
It is interesting that similar spectra profiles emerge from both
CaS:Eu2+ and CaZnOS:Eu2+. However, due to the change of the crys-
tal structure and crystal field, some unique phenomena appear as
CaZnOS:Eu2+,Ce3+ containing CaS (C) and CaS:Eu2+ (D) phosphors.
for the two Eu2+ ion activated substances. Compared with CaS:Eu2+
,
absorption peak at 378 nm attributed to host lattice is found when
the Eu ions concentration is low. Besides, whether Ce3+ ions exist
or not, the luminescence spectrum profile of CaZnOS:Eu2+ has no
change. That is to say, Ce3+ ions play a role of deoxidizer to pro-
mote the formation of Eu2+ and also transfer energy to Eu2+ so that
no obvious emission of the sensitizer can be detected.
several differences of the spectra can be easily found. Firstly, the
ultraviolet excitation bands in Fig. 3 reveal the biggest variance.
CaS:Eu2+ possesses a prominent UV excitation band which locates
at about 327 nm attributed to 4f7(8S7/2) ? 4f65d1(t2g) [2,26] transi-
tion of Eu2+ ions, while the weak UV band of CaZnOS peaks at
378 nm attributed to host lattice (HL) absorption of CaZnOS. In
addition, the main excitation band of CaS:Eu ranges from 400 to
630 nm. For CaZnOS: Eu2+, the absorption at the visible region,
more abruptly, starts at about 420 nm. Nevertheless, the profiles
of the red emission bands of the two phosphors are nearly the
same except for the locations at 650 nm of CaS:Eu and 645 nm of
CaZnOS:Eu2+, respectively. On the other hand, the luminescence
Phosphors co-doped with Ce3+ and Eu2+ have been investigated
under reducing (H2/N2) atmosphere, such as YAG:Ce3+,Eu2+ [20],
Ba2ZnS3:Ce3+,Eu2+ [21], and Li2SrSiO4:Eu2+,Ce3+ [22]. As we know,
Eu can exist as Eu2+/Eu3+ and Ce as Ce3+/Ce4+ [23]. It is assumed
that Ce3+ ions undergo easy oxidation to induce the formation of
Eu2+/Ce4+ [23,24] during heating Eu3+ and Ce3+ co-existent mixture
so that energy transfer occurs from Ce3+ to Eu2+ resulting in the
enhancement of the emission of Eu2+. Hence, the redox reaction
would spontaneously happen in an enclosed system without
reducing gas. This process can be illustrated by the following
formulas [20,23,24]:
intensity of CaZnOS:Eu2+ is relatively
a quarter of that of
CaS:Eu2+. And because of this, once the impurity CaS forms, the
luminescence of CaS:Eu2+ would be absolutely dominant so that
the characteristic luminescence of CaZnOS:Eu2+ is difficult to be
detected as shown by phosphor C in Fig. 3.
Ce3þ ! eÅ þ Ce4þ
Eu3þ þ eÅ ! Eu2þ
ð2Þ
The UV–vis absorption spectra of the as-synthesized phosphors
are plotted in Fig. 4. The absorption band of CaZnOS host material
is concentrated in the near-UV region which well matches with the
excitation spectrum of pure CaZnOS as depicted in Fig. 3. By con-
trast, the absorption band of CaZnOS:Eu2+,Ce3+ stretches to the vis-
ible region so that a fairly wide excitation band of the phosphor
covered the whole green light region is observed. In comparison
with the pure CaZnOS:Eu2+,Ce3+, a remarkably uplift at a range of
430–630 nm turns up in impure CaZnOS: Eu2+,Ce3+ and CaS:Eu2+
phosphors. This result can support the phenomenon about higher
luminescence intensity of CaS than CaZnOS doped with Eu2+ ions.
Especially, the center of the UV absorption of CaS:Eu2+ shifts to
about 330 nm in accordance with the excitation band.
To better understand the differences of the optical spectra be-
tween CaZnOS:Eu2+ and CaS:Eu2+, a infrared (IR) test was also car-
ried out. Fig. 5 exhibits the IR spectra of different materials.
Comparison between pure CaZnOS and CaS (synthesized by the
method referred to Ref. [8]) suggests an assignment to a Ca–S
stretching model at 650, 931, 980, 1099, 1143 and 1213 cmꢀ1 as
the black arrows pointed which exist only in samples containing
CaS component. The atoms in CaZnOS are located in layers stacked
along the [001] irection so that Ca–O layers are inserted in the
aligned parallel [ZnS3O] layers attached to the O atom. In the polar
structure, the Ca–O layer and the other adjacent [ZnS3O] layer links
through van der Waals and consequently the interaction force be-
tween Ca and S atoms are quite weak. The peaks at 1414, 1501 and
ð3Þ
Therefore, we can infer from the above analysis that the red-emit-
ting phosphor (B) with composition CaZnOS:0.1%Eu2+, 0.1%Ce4+
,
0.4%Ce3+ was formed. In fact, CaZnOS materials just doped with
Ce3+ or Ce4+ were synthesized also under N2 flow when CeCl3 or
CeO2 was used as direct dopant. As shown in Fig. C1 (Supplemental
material), CaZnOS:Ce3+ phosphor shows similar optical property as
pure host material but the intensity of luminescence is obviously
enhanced. It is assumed that the doping level of Ce3+ is located at
the bottom of the conduction band of CaZnOS. The emission band
of CaZnOS:Ce3+ locates at the region of green light which almost
completely overlaps with the excitation band of Eu2+-doping CaZ-
nOS phosphor. Eu2+ and Ce3+ ions are f–d and d–d electron config-
urations, respectively. The energy transfer would occur between
activator/coactivator couples by efficient resonant type. Moreover,
when Ce3+ and Eu3+ ions co-exist in the matrix, Ce3+ can undergo
easy oxidation to Ce4+ during heating and the electron released dur-
ing the oxidation is used to convert Eu3+ to Eu2+ species. According
to the charge-transfer from Ce to Eu, energy transfer Ce3+ ? Eu2+
must happen and luminescence quenching of Ce3+ ions should take
place [25]. However, doping with Ce4+, nearly no obvious lumines-
cence phenomenon related to Ce4+ was detected in CaZnOS. The
electron configuration of Ce4+ is composed of 5d0 so that d–f