A transparent and dual-functional oxyfluoride glass ceramics with color-tunable up-conversion luminescence and high thermosensitivity

Abstract Transparent and dual-functional Er3+/Tm3+/Yb3+ tri-doped β-PbF2 glass ceramics (GCs) were synthesized successfully by the conventional melting-quenching method. Under 976 nm laser excitation, intense and typical emissions of Tm3+ and Er3+ with good signal discriminability were simultaneously observed. Just through regulating Er3+ concentration, a color-tunable emission over a large range of “purplish blue→cool white→green→reddish orange” was achieved in Er3+/Tm3+/Yb3+ tri-doped β-PbF2 GCs upon 976 nm laser excitation. Additionally, besides two pairs of conventional thermally coupled energy levels (TCELs) of Er3+ and Tm3+, temperature sensing property of the Er3+/Tm3+/Yb3+ tri-doped β-PbF2 GCs was investigated based on a novel coupled energy levels, 3F2,3 (Tm3+)/4S3/2 (Er3+). Fortunately, the relative sensitivity Sr of the novel coupled energy levels of 3F2,3 (Tm3+)/4S3/2 (Er3+) with the maximum value of 2.70 %K−1 at 288 K is improved tempestuously than the conventional TCELs, even larger than many other rare earth ion doped temperature sensors. The results presented in this work indicate that the transparent Er3+/Tm3+/Yb3+ tri-doped β-PbF2 GCs is a competitive dual-functional candidate with large range of color-tunable UCL and high thermosensitivity.