Date of Award

2020

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Natural Sciences

First Advisor

Black, Rebecca

Area of Concentration

Chemistry

Abstract

Divalent europium has many modern uses as a phosphor in applications such as plasma displays and light-emitting diodes. In this work, the isostructural nature of Eu2+ and Sr2+ was utilized to synthesize Eu2+-doped strontium borates of the composition (Sr1-xEux)[B8O11(OH)4] where x ranged from 0.0198 to 1.0, and the luminescent properties of the resulting materials were measured. The stable divalent europium borate compounds were prepared via a reductive environment method using concentrated HI to generate H2 gas in situ. This method does not require anaerobic conditions, which allows for ease of synthesis on the benchtop and air- and water-stable product compounds. Elemental Analysis by Energy-Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy of several samples showed minor inconsistencies in the Eu(II)-doping levels, but the average Eu(II)% in the samples usually correlate with the quantum yield trend. A sample with 3.12% average Eu(II) composition showed the highest quantum yield (93%, nearing unity), which is outstanding for a Eu(II) complex.

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