Preparation and luminescence properties of Tb3+ doped ZrO2 and BaZrO3 phosphors

ZrO2:Tb3+ and BaZrO3:Tb3+ powders are prepared by combustion synthesis method and the samples were further heated to 500, 700 and 1000 °C to improve the crystallinity of the materials. The structure and morphology of materials have been examined by X-ray diffraction, Raman spectra and scanning electron microscopy. It is remarkable that all the samples of ZrO2:Tb3+ and BaZrO3:Tb3+ have similar morphology. These images exhibited homogeneous aggregates of varying shapes and sizes, which are composed of a large number of small cuboids and broken cuboids. The cuboids and broken cuboids size of all the samples are less than 0.5 μm. Photoluminescence for both materials increases with increase of temperature and found maximum for the samples heated to 1000 °C with 5 mole% doping of Tb3+ ions. Luminescence is almost double for the zirconia compared to that of barium-zirconate.