Luminescence properties of Tb3+/Sm3+ co-doped 38B2O3―31Al2O3―31SrO glasses and glass ceramics

In this paper, Tb3+/Sm3+ co-doped 38B2O3―31Al2O3―31SrO glass was successfully prepared. After heat treatment, single crystal phase SrAl2B2O7 was precipitated from the parent glass. DTA data showed the glass transition temperature at 625 °C and a sharp exothermic peak at 860 °C. XRD patterns demonstrated a regular evolution from glass to glass ceramics with higher treatment temperature and longer treatment time. From the XRD patterns, we supposed that Tb3+/Sm3+ ions can be most likely contained in the crystal phase. The photoluminescence spectra showed that the crystallization can enhance the emission intensity significantly and there could be an optimum crystallization degree to get the strongest luminescence in glass ceramics. The light scattering of devitrification sample can vary the intensity ratio of Sm3+ and Tb3+ emission. Therefore, as a potential route, rare earth ions doped glass ceramics could be a further research direction of luminescence glasses for white light emitting diodes application.