Toward temperature‐dependent Bi3+‐related tunable emission in the YVO4:Bi3+ phosphor

Abstract Up until now, many previous works have indicated us that the photoluminescence ( PL ) properties of phosphors sometimes can be changed with the change in the external temperature, resulting in the anomalous PL phenomena and correlated new applications that are difficult to achieve at room temperature. In this work, we report the temperature‐dependent Bi 3+ ‐related PL properties in the YVO 4 :Bi 3+ phosphor. Our findings show that increasing the temperature from 10 to 300 K enables manipulating the energy interaction from groups to Bi 3+ , thereby leading to the temperature‐induced color tuning from blue (0.183, 0.212) to yellow (0.418, 0.490). Upon this heating process, we further reveal that the dynamic Bi 3+ luminescence has experienced a regular transition from double‐exponential to single‐exponential decay, which results in the decrease in the average Bi 3+ lifetime from 122.606 to 0.376 μs. Discussions on the PL results imply that the tunable PL observations are due to the interplay of temperature‐dependent energy transfer from groups to Bi 3+ and redistribution of the excited 3 P 0 and 3 P 1 states of Bi 3+ upon the thermal stimulation. This work not only presents the temperature‐triggered Bi 3+ tunable properties in the well‐studied YVO 4 host lattice but also can provide new insights into revealing Bi 3+ ‐related PL mechanism in other Bi 3+ ‐doped photonic materials in the future and, in the meanwhile, gives some directive ideas for us to explore previously unnoticed applications for rare‐earth ( RE ; eg, Eu 3+ , Pr 3+ , Tb 3+ , Eu 2+ , Er 3+ , etc) and other non‐ RE (eg, Bi 3+ , Mn 4+ , Mn 2+ , Cr 3+ , etc) doped phosphors.