Luminescent properties of titania doped with nanoparticles of gadolinium oxide and europium

In this work we synthetized seven samples of titania doped with nanoparticles of gadolinium oxide which, previously, were doped with europium at 2 mol%. The doped samples of titania were synthetized using the sol gel method and the nanoparticles of gadolinium oxide were synthetized by the precipitation reaction of precursors of gadolinium nitrate hexahydrate and europium nitrate pentahydrate. All the titania samples were submitted to a thermal treatment at 750 degrees C. Optical properties, such as the absorption, emission, and emission decay times, besides the X-ray diffraction patterns and the Raman spectra were recorded and analysed. The band gap was calculated from the extrapolation of the linear fit in the absorption edge range in the Tauc plot, the electronic transitions of the europium were identified. Finally, due to the high luminescent intensity of the nanoparticles of gadolinium oxide doped with europium, the possible incorporation of these into the matrix of titania, the possibility for exciting these using lower energy (375 nm) and consequently the shift in the band gap; made it possible to propose the material be used for photocatalytic and photonic applications.