In
recent years, rare-earth doped phosphors have gathered immense
attention in the luminescence field for lighting and electronic display
applications. However, the unavailability of an efficient and low-cost
red phosphor is a major challenge for the widespread deployment of
white light-emitting diodes (WLEDs) for practical purposes. Here we
report red light-emitting Li+ co-doped ZnAl2O4:Eu3+ nanophosphors synthesized by a modified
sol–gel route. These nanophosphors show excellent red emission
due to the 5D0 → 7F
j
(j = 1, 2, 3, and 4) transition
of Eu3+ ions under 394 nm excitation. Li+ co-doped
ZnAl2O4:Eu3+ nanophosphors exhibit
an almost 2-fold increase in photoluminescence (PL) intensity upon
incorporation of the optimum amount of Li+ in the ZnAl2O4:Eu3+ matrix. Apart from that, Li+ co-doping leads to the improvement of CIE coordinates that
is also reflected from the enhanced color purity offered by the co-doped
nanophosphors. Steady-state as well as time-resolved PL spectra clearly
reveal that addition of Li+ co-activator successfully reduces
nonradiative transitions in the co-doped nanophosphors. Introduction
of Li+ in Eu3+ doped ZnAl2O4 effectively neutralizes the charge imbalance problem and thus leads
to a significant increase in the PL efficiency of the nanophosphors.
The red LED fabricated by those co-doped nanophosphors exhibits strong
red emission under a driving voltage of 3 V. Obtained results strongly
highlight the bright prospect of Li+ co-doped ZnAl2O4:Eu3+ nanophosphors in the LED and
display applications.