Development of Nanostructured EuAl2O4 Phosphors with Strong Long-UV Excitation

Fueled by the need to develop novel materials for applications in solid state white-emitting lamps we have improved a new low-cost, clean and efficient technique to produce high luminescence phosphors with strong excitation in the long-UV range (350–400 nm) which makes them useful for applications in GaN-based solid state lamps. In this work, pressurized combustion synthesis has been successfully used to develop EuAl2O4 (europium aluminate), a new green photoluminescent material with monoclinic structure. The combustion synthesis reaction conditions can be adjusted to produce either the AlEuO3 orthorhombic phase at low pressures (0.1 MPa), or the new monoclinic EuAl2O4 phase, which is apparently more thermodynamically favorable at higher combustion reaction pressures (1.4 MPa). The luminescent material is a high surface area powder (∼50 m2/g) composed mainly of nanostructured needles and plates with 5–10 nm in diameter and 100–150 nm in length. A broad emission peak centered at 530 nm with a decay time of 1.5∼2 ms is obtained at the maximum excitation wavelength λexc = 370 nm.