Fabrication, Patterning, and Optical Properties of Nanocrystalline YVO 4 :A (A = Eu 3+ , Dy 3+ , Sm 3+ , Er 3+ ) Phosphor Films via Sol−Gel Soft Lithography

Nanocrystalline YVO4:A (A = Eu3+, Dy3+, Sm3+, Er3+) phosphor films and their patterning were fabricated by a Pechini sol−gel process combined with soft lithography. X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), thermogravimetric and differential thermal analysis (TG-DTA), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and optical microscopy, UV/vis transmission and absorption spectra, photoluminescence (PL) spectra, and lifetimes were used to characterize the resulting films. The results of XRD indicated that the films began to crystallize at 400 °C and the crystallinity increased with the increase of annealing temperatures. Transparent nonpatterned phosphor films were uniform and crack-free, which…