Work

Network-engineered rare-earth photonic glass with thermally stable dual-color luminescence for high-CRI white LEDs

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Eu 3 + /Tb 3+ co-doped ZnO-B 2 O 3 -SiO 2 (ZBS) glass samples were prepared by the melt-quenching method to investigate rare-earth-related structural evolution, thermal stability and luminescence behavior. Molecular dynamics simulations and FTIR analysis consistently reveal that the partial substitution of SiO 2 by Eu 2 O 3 /Tb 4 O 7 reduces the polymerization degree of the glass network, as evidenced by increased non-bridging oxygen-related units and decreased highly polymerized Q 3 /Q 4 species. Despite this depolymerization, the glass transition temperature and thermal expansion coefficient change only slightly, indicating that the ZBS glass retains excellent thermal stability. The co-doped glass exhibits tunable green-to-red luminescence associated with Tb 3+ and Eu 3+ emissions, and the spectral overlap between Tb 3+ emission and Eu 3+ excitation suggests a possible Tb 3+ →Eu 3+ energy-transfer pathway. Temperature-dependent luminescence further supports thermally stable dual-color emission, with the total emission intensity retaining 76.57% at 413 K. In addition, the single-doped glass powders enable clear multicolor latent fingerprint visualization under UV excitation. A W-LED device fabricated using the co-doped glass phosphor shows CIE chromaticity coordinates of (0.3299, 0.3302), a color rendering index of 90.2 and stable emission under different driving currents. These results indicate that Eu 3+ /Tb 3+ co-doped ZBS glass is a promising thermally stable luminescent material for fingerprint visualization and high-CRI W-LED while retaining temperature-dependent optical response potential.

Source: Journal of Alloys and Compounds

DOI: 10.1016/j.jallcom.2026.191057