Investigations on the Structural and Microstructural Properties of Nanostructured Sm3+-Doped Yttrium Oxide (Y2O3)

Metal oxide nanoparticles possess a variety of unique properties that make them useful in numerous applications. Yttrium oxide nanoparticles (Y2O3) exhibit strong photoluminescent properties, especially when doped with rare earth elements, they exhibit excellent optical properties. Nanoparticles of trivalent samarium (Sm) ion doped into yttrium oxide were synthesized by a simple one-step coprecipitation method. The Sm:Y2O3 nanoparticles are characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), UV-visible spectroscopy, and fluorescence spectroscopy. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) and transmission electron microscopic (TEM) analysis were carried out to confirm the formation of the particle in nanocrystalline nature. From the powder XRD pattern, the average particle size of nanoparticles was found to be around 8–16 nm for samarium dopant, whereas for neodymium, it was found to be around 20–40 nm which was calculated by Debye-Scherrer’s formula. The UV-vis showed that there is no absorption in the visible region and a direct bandgap is found to be 5.2 eV. From the fluorescence spectrometer, the emission band is observed at 606 nm for the transition from 4G5/2 to 6H7/2 for yttrium oxide doped with samarium nanoparticles.