Effect of surfactants on morphology, structure and photoluminescence properties of Eu-doped ZnO microsphere

The influence of polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) and monoethanolamine (MEA) as surfactants on photoluminescence (PL) of Eu-doped ZnO (ZnO:Eu) has been studied. X-ray diffraction (XRD) results show that there are more Eu3+ ions to replace Zn2+ ions into ZnO lattice for ZnO:Eu in the presence of surfactant MEA. From the spectral analysis for ZnO:Eu with different surfactants by Gaussian deconvolution, it can be seen that the use of MEA as a surfactant affects the energy transfer from ZnO host to Eu3+ ions and leads to three new emission peaks, including UV emission (389 nm), violet emission (411 nm) and green emission (506 nm).