Issue 2, 2018

Strong up-conversion luminescence of rare-earth doped oxide films enhanced by gap modes on ZnO nanowires

Abstract

Up-conversion luminescence (UCL) from rare-earth doped oxide (RE) films has great potential for application in fields such as solar cells, bioanalysis, or display technologies. However, the relatively high phonon energy of oxide matrices usually facilitates nonradiative relaxation leading to low UCL efficiency. Herein, we report a three-layer hierarchical structure of Ag/ZnO nanowires (nw-ZnO)/RE composite films, which enhances the UCL of rare-earth doped oxide films. An optimization of the geometric structure of the composite films demonstrated an increase of UCL by up to almost two orders of magnitude in Er3+ and Tm3+ doped YbMoO4 films. This UCL enhancement is attributed to the formation of a very strong electric field in the tips of the nw-ZnO creating a highly effective electric field at the composite films, combined with reflection at the silver layer. Furthermore, we use the UCL properties of these novel Ag/nw-ZnO/RE composite films to demonstrate their possible use in ZnO-based photocatalytic processes to enhance the utilization of near-infrared sunlight in these devices.

Graphical abstract: Strong up-conversion luminescence of rare-earth doped oxide films enhanced by gap modes on ZnO nanowires

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
28 Sep 2017
Accepted
29 Nov 2017
First published
01 Dec 2017

Nanoscale, 2018,10, 726-732

Strong up-conversion luminescence of rare-earth doped oxide films enhanced by gap modes on ZnO nanowires

J. Wu, B. Cao, L. Rino, Y. Fang, L. Hu, Z. Zhang, Y. Huang and B. Dong, Nanoscale, 2018, 10, 726 DOI: 10.1039/C7NR07241D

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