Chelating agent and substrate effect on hydrothermal growth of Yb3+/Er3+ doped NaYf4 film

We report simultaneous crystal growth and deposition of upconverting Yb3+/Er3+ doped NaYF4 film (UCF) on conducting and non-conducting substrates by one-step hydrothermal method. The characteristics such as film topography, morphology, crystallographic phase and upconverting luminescence intensity were found to depend both on the chelating agent and nature of the substrate. The characteristics of the prepared films varied interestingly when either the chelating agent or the substrate was changed. The upconversion emission intensities were found to increase with decreasing film roughness. Further, current investigation demonstrated that the NaYF4 films deposited using EDTA or DTPA chelating agents on ITO substrate and EGTA chelating agent on PG substrate were more uniform and resulted in greater upconverted emission intensities. We envision plausible use of current technology in the development of affordable optical platforms for several optoelectronic applications.