Speaker
Description
Ce doped silica has potential applications for a luminescent material as phosphors for cathodoluminescence, scintillators and detectors. Ce ions can occur in a trivalent or a tetravalent state: only the trivalent Ce3+ state with a single 4f electron is optically active, while the tetravalent Ce4+ ion is non-luminescent. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) is a suitable technique to investigate the oxidation states of Ce in cerium oxides and such studies have been carried out because of the importance of CeO2/Ce2O3 conversion in automotive exhaust catalysts. However, the XPS Ce(3d) spectrum of cerium oxide is rather complex as it contains ten closely spaced and overlapping peaks on a strong background. The main challenge is to obtain accurate fits to experimental data while still maintaining a good physical basis for the fitting parameters. The analysis of Ce in SiO2:Ce is even more challenging since the Ce concentration for luminescent samples is only in the region of 1%. Although it has been experimentally shown that to improve the luminescence efficiency of Ce doped silica it can be useful to anneal the glass in a reducing atmosphere, with the implication that this increases the concentration of Ce3+ luminescent ions, we are not aware of XPS measurements that correlate the relative concentrations of the Ce3+ and Ce4+ ions to the luminescent properties. In this work, cerium doped silica was prepared by the sol-gel method. The effect of annealing temperature and atmosphere on the luminescent properties are correlated to XPS measurements of the oxidation state of Ce in the samples.
| Consider for a student <br> award (Yes / No)? | yes |
|---|---|
| Level (Hons, MSc, <br> PhD, other)? | PhD |
| Would you like to <br> submit a short paper <br> for the Conference <br> Proceedings (Yes / No)? | yes |
