Quaternary tungstates with the composition Li3Ba2Gd3(WO4)8 doped with different concentrations of Dy3+ (from 0.5 to 10 at%) were prepared by the solid-state reaction method at 900 °C. Their structural, spectroscopic and optical properties were studied systematically in this work. X-ray diffraction analysis confirmed the crystallization of Li3Ba2Gd3(WO4)8 to have a monoclinic structure (sp. gr. C2/c); the lattice constants for 1 at% doping concentration of Dy3+ are a = 5.2126(2) Å, b = 12.7382(1) Å, c = 19.1884(3) Å, Vcalc = 1273,40(4) Å3 and β = a × c = 91.890(9)°. The first principles calculations for the undoped crystal revealed a direct bandgap of 2.45 eV, which is very close to the experimental one. The identified broad, and strong excitation peak at 450 nm indicates that Li3Ba2Gd3(WO4)8:Dy3+ phosphors are suitable to be pumped by a blue laser diode (LD). Under excitation at 445 nm, the phosphor showed a stronger luminescence peak at 575 nm which corresponds to the Dy3+:4F9/2 → 6H13/2 transition, and three weaker emissions peaks at 477, 661, and 750 nm. Meanwhile, the effect of different Dy3+ contents on the luminescence properties was investigated. The optimum concentration to minimize the quenching effect was 4 at% and the critical distance is 31.209 Å. The phosphor emitted strong greenish-yellow light situated at (0.425, 0.472) in CIE coordinates with a color temperature of 3652 K. All the measured luminescence lifetime curves exhibited a single-exponential nature. Excellent thermal stability was found for this tungstate phosphor (the activation energy is 0.352 ± 0.01 eV). The measured absolute photoluminescence quantum yield was around 10.5%. The results presented in this work show that Li3Ba2Gd3(WO4)8:Dy3+ phosphors with strong yellow emission are promising candidates for white-light emitting LED (wLED) applications.
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