The ability to manipulate the luminescent color, intensity and long lifetime of nanophosphors is important for anti-counterfeiting applications. Unfortunately, persistent luminescence materials with multimode luminescent features have rarely been reported, even though they are expected to be highly desirable in sophisticated anti-counterfeiting. Here, the luminescence properties of Zn3Ga2GeO8:Mn phosphors were tuned by using different preparation approaches, including a hydrothermal method and solid-state reaction approach combining with non-equivalent ion doping strategy. As a result, Mn-activated Zn3Ga2GeO8 phosphors synthesized by a hydrothermal method demonstrate an enhanced red photoluminescence at 701 nm and a strong green luminescence with persistent luminescence and photostimulated luminescence at 540 nm. While Mn-activated Zn3Ga2GeO8 phosphors synthesized by solid-state reactions combined with a hetero-valent doping approach only exhibit an enhanced single-band red emission. Keeping the synthetic method unchanged, the substitution of hetero-valent dopant ion Li+ into different sites is valid for spectral fine-tuning. A spectral tuning mechanism is also proposed. Mn-activated Zn3Ga2GeO8 phosphors synthesized by a hydrothermal approach with multimodal luminescence is especially suitable for multiple anti-counterfeiting, multicolor display and other potential applications.
Keywords: Zn3Ga2GeO8:Mn phosphors; afterglow; anti-counterfeiting application; hydrothermal approach; multicolor emission.