1. Oxygen vacancy luminescence and band gap narrowing driven by Ce ion doping with variable valence in SnO2 nanocrystals.
- Author
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Yang, Yu, Chen, Changzhao, and Wang, Xin
- Subjects
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STANNIC oxide , *LUMINESCENCE , *NANOCRYSTALS , *OXYGEN , *VISIBLE spectra , *CERIUM oxides , *CARRIER density - Abstract
Although considerable research works have witnessed the important modulations of oxygen vacancies on the optical, electrical, and magnetic properties of SnO 2 nanostructures, it is not easy to control oxygen vacancy defects in such systems.The difficulty stems from that oxygen vacancy is a kind of atomic defect, and its distribution is sensitive to process conditions and external factors, which makes direct characterization and purposeful control difficult. The purpose of this work on Ce-doped SnO 2 nanocrystals is to investigate the tolerance of the host lattice to Ce ions, the population and evolution of Ce3+/Ce4+ ions, and the possibility to adjust oxygen vacancies by Ce3+ ions, and then focus on the influence of oxygen vacancy defects on the band gap and luminescence performance. As Ce doping concentration increases from 0 to 12 at.%, the doped system changes from Ce3+ dominated at low doping amount (≤3 at.%) to Ce3+/Ce4+ coexistence at medium doping concentration (3 at.% ∼ 9 at.%), to occurrence of CeO 2 impurity phase at over doping (∼12 at.%). The optimum doping occurs at 6 at.%, which corresponds to the saturated critical point of Ce3+ content and the maximum oxygen vacancy concentration. Importantly, the oxygen vacancies in the current Ce-doped SnO 2 nanocrystals is directly regulated by the Ce3+ ion concentration on the Sn sites, which plays an important role in the band gap tuning and visible light emission. With Ce concentration increasing from 0 to 12 at.%, the band gap monotonicity decreases from 3.36 eV to 3.12 eV, while the intensity of the oxygen vacancy luminescence band first increases and then decreases, with the turning point at 6 at.%. Both band gap narrowing effect and enhanced emission indicate that Ce-doped SnO 2 should be a promising method to design and manufacture visible light responsive SnO 2 based optoelectronic materials by manipulating oxygen vacancy defects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2023
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