The Effect of Size and Thermal Treatment on the Photoluminescent Properties of Europium-Doped SiO Nanoparticles Prepared in One Pot by Sol-Gel.

Europium (Eu)-doped silica nanoparticles have attracted great interest for different applications, in particular in biomedicine as biosensors or for tissue regeneration. Sol-gel is the most common process used to prepare those particles, with size varying from tens to hundreds of nanometers. In this article, we focus our attention on the comparison between two commonly used sol-gel derived methods: reverse microemulsion (for particles smaller than 100 nm) and Stöber method (for particles larger than 100 nm).

Europium-Doped Sol-Gel SiO₂-Based Glasses: Effect of the Europium Source and Content, Magnesium Addition and Thermal Treatment on Their Photoluminescence Properties.

Rare-earth doped silica-based glasses lead the optical materials due to their tailorable spectroscopic and optical properties. In this context, we took advantage of the sol-gel process to prepare various Eu-doped silica glasses to study their luminescent properties before and after annealing at 900 °C. The effect of magnesium on these properties was studied in comparison with Mg-free-glass.

Effect of compositional variation on optical and structure properties of europium-doped SiO(2)-HfO(2) glasses.

Glasses with compositions (100-x)SiO(2)-xHfO(2):0.3Eu(3+) (molar ratio, x=0,10,20,30) for optical applications were prepared using the sol-gel route. The introduction of hafnium into the glass matrix induced the energy splitting of the F27 state of Eu(3+) ions.