Defect Mediated Optical Properties In ZnAl2O4 Phosphor

The present work describes defect mediated optical properties in ZnAl2O4 phosphor material, synthesized through sol-gel combustion method, which has potential to be used both as a blue emitting phosphor material as well as white emitting, depending upon the annealing temperature during the synthesis procedure. Various defect centers such as anionic vacancy, cationic vacancy, antisite defects etc. create different electronic states inside the band gap, which are responsible for the multicolour emission. The interesting colour tunable emission characteristics can be linked with the various defect centers and their changes upon annealing.