Abstract
A general and facile hydrothermal process was established for the synthesis of the trivalent europium ion-doped yttrium orthovanadate (YVO4:Eu3+) nanofibers. The TEM observations indicated that the nanofibers were formed by a surface deposition with a subsequent crystal growth procedure through hydrothermally treating the material up to 15 h, during which the VO43- deposited onto the surface of the Eu(OH)(3) precursor and then reacted gradually with the inner core to generate the YVO4 nanofibers. Photoluminescence properties of YVO4:Eu3+ nanofibers have been investigated and have shown that emission intensity of electric dipole transition is dominating over magnetic dipole transition indicating the asymmetric environment of Eu3+ ion. These well crystalline Eu3+ ion-doped YVO4 nanofibers ;exhibit great potential to act as a novel red-emitting phosphor. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.