Rare earth ion-doped In₂O₃ nanostructures

Full text: Indium oxide (In₂O₃ ) is a promising material as it has a wide band gap (3.5-3.7 eV), high conductivity and good optical transparency. It finds a range of applications such in optoelectronic devices, photocatalysis and especially in gas sensors [1-3]. The size and morphology control of nanostructures is an interesting field in development, due to the possibility of improving the optical and physical properties. In this context rare-earth ion-doped materials have attracted extensive attention due to the possibility to obtain a novel material. In this work we prepared pure In₂O₃ and La and Er ions-doped In₂O₃ nanostructures from annealing of the as-prepared In(OH)₃ , pure and doped with these rare earth ions, at 350 deg C for 2 min using a domestic microwave. The In₂O₃ cubic structure was verified by X-ray diffraction patterns, in according to JCPDS 06-0416, indicating that the rare earth ions were incorporated in the oxide lattice. The field emission gun scanning electron microscopy (FEG-SEM) images showed to the doped samples a cube-like morphology with approximately 40 nm of edge length, larger when compared with the pure In₂O₃. All the samples presented photoluminescence (PL) properties and the PL curves exhibits a maxim band at 620 nm in the yellow-orange-red emission. The PL intensity decreases to the La and Er ions-doped In₂O₃ nanostructures. References: [1] Jun Zeng,Jianzhang Li, Junbo Zhong, et al. Mat. Sci. Semicond. Process. 16, 1808 (2013) [2] V.D. Kapse, S.A. Ghosh, G.N. Chaudhari, et al. Vacuum 83, 346 (2009) [3] Ting Zhang, Fubo Gu, Dongmei Han, et al. Sensors and Actuators B 177, 1180 (2013). (author)