Bi-combustion synthesis technique for the reduction of crystallite size of nanophosphors - a modified version

Abstract

Nanophase materials, in recent times, have attracted many a researcher all over the world, on account of their exceptionally high efficiency in terms of morphological and optical behavior. In the nano-range order, various physical and chemical methods are employed to produce materials commercially, but the reported methods owing to their own physical conditions, limit the crystallite sizes to a certain nano-order. To prevail over this size-related limitation, a new modified bi-combustion synthesis technique (B-CST) has been introduced, which aids inthe formation of nanomaterials, with an average size of 10-20 nm, without using any ball milling process. In order to scrutinize the crystallite sizes of SrAl₂O₄: Eu²⁺, Dy³⁺ phosphors synthesized by CST and B-CST, the X-ray diffraction (XRD) technique is used to determine the crystalline phase only while high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) is used, which is the most sought-after method world-wide and is vigorously used to determine the crystallite size.