Effects of precursors in the ethanol-based sol-gel synthesis of Zn ₂SiO₄:Mn phosphor

A sol-gel synthesis process and green luminescence of nanocrystalline Zn₂SiO₄:Mn phosphor is discussed. Ethanol was used as a solvent, and all the processes were performed in a simple air environment, requiring no further reducing heat treatment. The initial manganese composition was set to produce the final composition of Zn_2-xMn _xSiO₄ phosphors for each combination of precursors. The manganese precursor was added to the solution after a fixed molar amount of zinc precursor and tetraethoxysilane (TEOS) was dissolved in ethanol and then stirred for 30 min at room temperature. X-ray diffraction (XRD) was used to identify the crystalline phases of the sol-gel synthesized Zn ₂SiO₄:Mn phosphors. The resuls of the study show that the crystallite size of the phosphor to be less than 200nm on average.