Photoluminescence of combinatorically sputtered Al₂O₃–Y₂O₃ thin films with a Cr³⁺ and Nd³⁺ co-doping concentration gradient

The characterization of a wide range of luminescent thin films can be a long and tedious endeavor. With reactive combinatorial sputtering of multiple metal targets, it possible to fabricate thin films with a gradient in composition simply by not rotating the substrate. In this work, combinatorically sputtered thin films of Cr³⁺ and...

Metal-insulator multilayer precursors for enhanced Sm²⁺ absorption and Tm²⁺ luminescence in SiAlO thin films prepared by magnetron sputtering

Silicon-aluminum-oxigen (SiAlO) coatings doped with Sm²⁺ and prepared by reactive magnetron co-sputtering of Si, Al, and Sm targets, are attractive for luminescence solar concentrator applications but suffer from the low absorption between 300 and 600 nm. This article reports that the main cause of low absorption is a high...

Optical and structural characterization of Tm₂O₃, TmN, and TmO_xN_y thin films grown by direct-current reactive magnetron sputtering

This paper reports the fabrication and characterization of several thulium oxide and nitride thin films grown by reactive magnetron direct-current sputtering. Hysteresis curves of the Tm emission spectra of the sputtering plasma versus the flow of N₂ or O₂ around the Tm-metal target were monitored. Emission spectra of...

Towards Tm²⁺ in sialon thin films grown by sputtering using the gradient deposition

The valence stability parameter (E_Ff), defined as the difference between the charge transfer energy to the host intrinsic Fermi energy, was used as criterion to analyze the capability of different host materials within the SiAlON class to stabilize divalent thulium. Available data on charge transfer energies and optical bandgap...