Co-solvent-assisted sintering and thermal stability investment of BaMgAl10O17:Eu2+ by cationic substitution

Abstract Thermal quenching is one of the most critical challenges for the application of materials under high temperatures. Particularly, BaMgAl10O17:Eu2+ (BAM) has been well considered the preferred blue-emitting phosphor in tricolor fluorescent lamps, plasma display panels (PDP), and many other lighting and display devices due to its excellent luminescence efficiency and satisfactory chromaticity. However, its wide application range is still constrained by two major problems. Firstly, the synthesis temperature for BAM is too high. Commercial BAM materials are typically prepared with high-temperature solid-phase methods over 1550°Ctemperatures. Secondly, co-solvent, which is added during the synthetic process to dissolve the solid phases, is prone to thermal deterioration. To tackle these problems, we propose the cationic substitution method combined with co-solvent-assisted sintering to improve the thermal stability of BAM. In the end, we obtained a novel BAM material with a comparably lower synthesis temperature and satisfactory thermal stability. In our work, the thermal stability of BAM synthesized with 5% boric acid substituted by 0.08 mol Ca2+ was significantly higher compared with that synthesized without calcium substitution. Additionally, the activation energies ( Δ E ) of Ba0.92Ca0.08MgAl10O17:Eu2+ and Ba0.92Sr0.08MgAl10O17:Eu2+ were calculated to be approximately 0.26 eV and 0.35 eV, respectively, indicating that the BAM substituted with Sr2+ is more thermally stable.