Investigating photoluminescence in Gd 3+ activated pyrochlore-type fluoro-aluminates

Fluoro-aluminates with pyrochlore-type structures such as Cs2KAl3F12 & Cs2NaAl3F12 could have very useful industrial applications but despite of having much significance, very less exploration on these kinds of compounds has been accomplished. Although some experiments related to luminescence studies on Ce3+ activated phosphors have been achieved on these fluorides long ago, since then very less considerable work on investigating such compounds was done so far. Therefore further work has been carried out by adding rare-earth gadolinium (Gd) as an activator in these complexes. Gadolinium in its trivalent form showed encouraging luminescence results. Additionally, the effect of dopant concentration on photoluminescence intensities has been studied. Decay characteristics showed long lifetimes (in ms) that vary with Gd3+ concentrations. Also, respective values for quantum efficiency (Ø)% and non-radiative rates (AnR) have been evaluated. Phase-purity was confirmed with the help of XRD and Rietveld analysis.