Fabrication of Eu-coated silica particles by homogeneous precipitation method

This paper describes a method for Eu-coating of submicron-sized silica particles. The core silica particles with an average size of 333 nm were prepared with Stöber method. The Eu-coating was performed in a water/propanol solvent in the presence of silica particles and europium acetate with a homogeneous precipitation method with the use of urea. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) observation and measurements of ζ-potentials revealed that the silica particles were successfully coated with Eu shell. Eu shell size of the Eu-silica particles ranged from 5 to 38 nm with varying concentration of silica particles.