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A series of Eu2+ and Tb3+ singly-doped and co-doped Sr3Y2(Si3O9)2 (SYSO) phosphors have been synthesized via a conventional high-temperature solid-state reaction. The crystal structures, photoluminescence properties, fluorescence lifetimes, thermal properties and energy transfer of SYSO:Eu2+,Tb3+ were systematically investigated in detail. Rietveld structure refinement of the obtained phosphors indicated that the SYSO host crystallized in a monoclinic system with the space group C2/c (15) and there are three kinds of cation sites for the doped ions to occupy forming emission centers. The photoluminescence (PL) emission bands of SYSO:xEu2+ show a red-shift tendency with increasing Eu2+ content which should be attributed to more Eu2+ ions entering into Sr2/Y2 and Sr3/Y3 sites from the Sr1/Y1 site. For the co-doped SYSO:Eu2+,Tb3+ samples, tunable colors from cyan to green can be realized by varying the doping concentration of the Tb3+ ions. The intense green emission was realized in the SYSO:Eu2+,Tb3+ phosphors on the basis of the highly efficient energy transfer from Eu2+ to Tb3+ with an efficiency of over 89%. As a result, the emission intensity of SYSO:0.01Eu2+,0.21Tb3+ is about 2.5 times higher than that of SYSO:0.21Tb3+ under 340 nm UV excitation. The energy transfer mechanism from Eu2+ to Tb3+ in the SYSO host was ascribed to the quadrupole–quadrupole interactions. These results indicated that the SYSO:Eu2+,Tb3+ phosphors can act as single-phase green emitting phosphors for possible applications in ultraviolet light-based white light-emitting diodes (w-LEDs). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]