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The unintentional incorporation of various unknown trace amounts of impurities poses challenges and controversies in identifying luminescent mechanisms of certain systems. A common approach to confirm or exclude the involvement of a certain activation center is to monitor the changes in luminescence by intentionally doping the inferred species into the crystal. Here, an intriguing luminescent phenomenon resulting from the hidden interplay between the dopants and trace impurities, is presented. In alkaline‐earth stannate perovskites, near‐infrared luminescence is observed. By combining density‐functional calculations with the well‐designed doping and codoping experimental strategies, the mechanisms behind this anomaly is successfully uncovered. It originates from the stabilization of Cr3 + by codopants such as Bi and rare‐earth (RE) ions, acting as electron donors. The luminescence is almost unobservable when chromium is doped alone, and thus the traditional identification method does't work. This work emphasizes the important role of trace impurity in materials, especially the subtle change of valence state of trace impurity upon doping, which provides enlightening insights and prompts reassessments of numerous reported anomalous luminescent phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technological progress has accelerated the researches into broadband near‐infrared (NIR) luminescent materials as next‐generation intelligent NIR light sources; however, poor thermal stability restricts the applications of NIR phosphors. Herein, new insights into Cr3+‐activated NIR phosphors with improved thermal stability are provided. The photoluminescence intensity originating from the 4T2→4A2 broadband emission of CaLu2Al4SiO12:Cr3+ (CLAS:Cr) with optimal electron occupation (4T2/2E) increases up to 118% at 475 K compared with that at room temperature, which is the best for Cr3+‐activated broadband NIR phosphor. Accordingly, new ideas for the design of thermally stable phosphors are proposed by optimizing the thermal population between 4T2 and 2E states and electron migration from 2E to 4T2 state. Finally, multifunctional applications of CLAS:Cr in NIR fluorescence intensity ratio thermometry, X‐ray detection, NIR phosphor‐converted light‐emitting diodes, and bio‐imaging are demonstrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have witnessed tremendous success of convolutional neural networks in image classification. In the training of image classification, softmax cross-entropy (SCE) loss is widely used because of its clear physical definition and concise gradient calculation. We reformulate SCE loss into a more basic form, in light of which we can understand SCE loss better and rethink the loss functions in image classification. We propose a novel loss function called another metric (AM) loss, which is different from SCE loss in form but is the same in essence. AM loss not only retains the advantages of SCE loss but also provides more gradient information at the later phase of training and has larger inter-classes distances. Extensive experiments on CIFAR-10/100, Tiny ImageNet, and three fine-grained datasets show that AM loss can outperform SCE loss, which also shows the great potential of improving deep neural network training by exploring new loss functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we have produced carboxylic acids by the oxidation of various alcohols in the presence of CO2 using SBA-15/IL supported Cu(II) (SBA-15/IL/Cu(II)) as nanocatalyst. The obtained products showed to have excellent yields by taking into account of SBA-15/IL/Cu(II) nanocatalyst. In addition, the analysis of EDX, SEM, TGA, TEM, XPS, and FT-IR showed the heterogeneous structure of SBA-15/IL/Cu (II) catalyst. It is determined that, after using SBA-15 excess, the catalytic stability of the system was enhanced. Moreover, hot filtration provided a full vision in the heterogeneous catalyst nature. The recycling as well as reuse of the catalyst were studied in cases of coupling reactions many times. Moreover, we have studied the mechanism of the coupling reactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A high color rendering index white light emitting diode (WLED) is generally produced by combining yellow and red mixed phosphors on a blue chip. Herein we report a single component phosphor based on CaY2Al4SiO12 (CYAS) to achieve warm white light emission with a high color rendering index (Ra), which can be up to 90.5. Ce3+, Mn2+ singly doped and co-doped CYAS phosphors have been synthesized by solid state reactions, respectively, for comparative investigations. The Rietveld X-ray diffraction (XRD) refinements show that the CYAS host crystallizes in a cubic structure with the Ia3¯d space group. The valence states of Ce and Mn inside the CYAS host have been confirmed by XPS and EPR. Ce3+ occupies the Ca2+/Y3+ site and generates a yellow emission band around 543 nm from its characteristic 5d–4f transition. Mn2+ occupies both the dodecahedron Ca2+/Y3+ and octahedral Al3+ sites, emitting red and deep red lights at 616 nm and 750 nm, respectively. These two emission bands are attributed to the 4T1(4G)–6A1(6S) transitions of Mn2+. Upon 460 nm light excitation, both the Ce3+ and Mn2+ characteristic emissions can be obtained, in which the emissions of Mn2+ result from the occurrence of energy transfer from Ce3+ in CYAS. All the results indicate that the prepared CYAS:Ce3+,Mn2+ could be a promising single component phosphor for blue chip WLEDs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The poor moisture-resistant property of the commercial narrow band red-emitting K2SiF6:Mn4+ phosphor restricts its practical application in high performance warm WLEDs. Herein, we report epitaxial growth via simple ethanol-induced deposition to enhance the luminescence and moisture resistance of K2SiF6:Mn4+. Specifically, an appropriate amount of ethanol at the end of the synthesis leads to epitaxial growth of a K2SiF6:Mn4+ shell. The resultant K2SiF6:Mn4+@K2SiF6:Mn4+ presents higher photoluminescence intensity due to a high Mn4+ critical concentration in the K2SiF6:Mn4+ epitaxial shell. Furthermore, the epitaxial growth of the K2SiF6 shell on K2SiF6:Mn4+ is designed to conquer the moisture resistance. As expected, the formed K2SiF6:Mn4+@K2SiF6 retains 82% of the initial emission intensity after being immersed in water for 4 h and 90% after being exposed to high temperature and humidity (85 °C, 85%) for 10 days. By employing K2SiF6:Mn4+@K2SiF6 as a red phosphor, a packaged white LED exhibits excellent performance with a CRI of 96.5, a CCT of 2879 K and a luminous efficacy of 119.74 lm W−1. More importantly, this fabricated WLED device retains high luminous efficacy and undergoes minor chromatic coordinate changes when aged at high temperature and humidity (85 °C, 85%). Therefore, these findings not only illustrate the effect of ethanol addition on the photoluminescence intensity of Mn4+ doped phosphors in the synthesis process, but also provide a facile strategy to improve the moisture resistance of K2SiF6:Mn4+ for warm WLEDs in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Narrow-band red-emitting fluoride phosphors for wide color gamut LED backlights have evoked considerable attention, due to their fascinating optical properties. Unfortunately, poor moisture resistance often restricts their further applications in optoelectronics. Herein we developed a Cs2SiF6:Mn4+ red phosphor using a low-temperature co-precipitation method and passivating it by using H2O2. The phosphor shows a very high external quantum efficiency (EQE) of ∼85% and exhibits excellent moisture stability retaining 74% of its emission intensity after being exposed to high temperature (85 °C) and high humidity (85%) (HTHH) for 168 h. Finally, the high brightness white LED devices combined with the passivated Cs2SiF6:Mn4+ exhibit high luminous efficacy of 133 lm W−1 and wide color gamut (∼84.7% NTSC). The results demonstrate that the passivated Cs2SiF6:Mn4+ with high EQE and excellent moisture-resistance is promising as a narrow-band red emitting phosphor for wide color gamut LED backlights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A series of Ln-doped KSrPO4 (Ln = Ce3+, Eu3+, Eu2+, Pr3+) phosphors are prepared through a high-temperature solid-state method. The KSrPO4 compound is confirmed to possess a β-K2SO4 structure with the Pnma group by Rietveld refinement, and the temperature-dependent lattice parameters are investigated with the powder X-ray diffraction results at different temperatures. Ce3+ and Eu3+ ions are introduced to probe the crystal field strength (CFS) and the lanthanide site symmetry by using VUV-UV-vis spectroscopy. The temperature-dependent luminescence properties of KSrPO4: Ce3+/Eu2+ exhibit an excellent thermal stability of Ce3+/Eu2+ luminescence. Based on the VUV-UV-vis spectra of Ce3+ and Eu3+ doped KSrPO4, the vacuum referred binding energy (VRBE) scheme is constructed to understand the redox properties of Eu, the 5d energy levels of Pr3+ and the thermal quenching characteristics of Ce3+ and Eu2+ luminescence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, we demonstrate a potential thermometric material after systematic studies on the concentration/temperature-dependent spectroscopic properties of Pr3+ excited multiplets and of the Pr3+–Ti4+ intervalence charge transfer (IVCT) state in (La1−xPrx)2MgTiO6. The experimental results indicate that the electron population efficiency between the involved Pr3+ 4f multiplets is directly governed by multi-phonon relaxation (MPR) and cross relaxation (CR), and the IVCT state provides an additional contribution to the 1D2 luminescence. A schematic energy level diagram is proposed to illustrate the electron population pathway in Pr3+ doped La2MgTiO6. The observations clarify that the dramatic thermal-quenching of 3P0 luminescence is mainly induced by the electronic configuration crossover between the 3P0 multiplet and the IVCT state. On the other hand, the 1D2 luminescence possesses an excellent thermal stability in a large temperature region. These temperature sensing features of the Pr3+ doped La2MgTiO6 material indicate its potential application in optical thermometric techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]