A novel method for the synthesis of YAG:Ce phosphor

YAG:Ce phosphor was synthesized by a novel simple method, wherein the admixture of three raw materials (Y2O3, alpha-Al2O3 and CeO2) were first acidified by diluted nitric acid to prepare a precursor, followed by a high temperature heating treatment of the obtained precursor under reductive atmosphere. Through XRD measurement and SEM observation, it was found that Y2O3, one of the raw material, was firstly dissolved into the diluted nitric acid, and then recrystallized on the surface of both alpha-Al2O3 and CeO2 to form a novel nano-flaky hierarchical architectures with the crystalline structure of yttrium nitrate hydroxide hydrates, which makes all the precursor more homogeneous than the admixture of the raw materials from simple mechanical blending method. In the following heating process, the obtained homogeneous admixtures with hierarchical architectures could easily transform into uniform YAG:Ce phosphor. The resulted YAG:Ce phosphor exhibited higher emission intensity than the sample synthesized from mechanical mixing raw materials.