%0 Journal Article %T Study of energy transfer mechanism from ZnO nanocrystals to Eu3+ ions %+ School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE) %+ CNRS International - NTU - Thales Research Alliance (CINTRA) %+ Laboratoire de Nanotechnologie et d'Instrumentation Optique (LNIO) %A Mangalam, Vivek %A Pita, Kantisara %A Couteau, Christophe %< avec comité de lecture %@ 1931-7573 %J Nanoscale Research Letters %I SpringerOpen %V 11 %N 1 %8 2016-12 %D 2016 %R 10.1186/s11671-016-1282-3 %K Zinc oxide nanocrystals %K Energy transfer mechanism %K Europium(III) ions %K Photoluminescence %Z Engineering Sciences [physics]/Micro and nanotechnologies/Microelectronics %Z Chemical Sciences/Material chemistry %Z Engineering Sciences [physics]/Optics / PhotonicJournal articles %X In this work, we investigate the efficient energy transfer occurring between ZnO nanocrystals (ZnO-nc) and europium (Eu3+) ions embedded in a SiO2 matrix prepared using the sol-gel technique. We show that a strong red emission was observed at 614 nm when the ZnO-nc were excited using a continuous optical excitation at 325 nm. This emission is due to the radiative 5D0 → 7F2 de-excitation of the Eu3+ ions and has been conclusively shown to be due to the energy transfer from the excited ZnO-nc to the Eu3+ ions. The photoluminescence excitation spectra are also examined in this work to confirm the energy transfer from ZnO-nc to the Eu3+ ions. Furthermore, we study various de-excitation processes from the excited ZnO-nc and their contribution to the energy transfer to Eu3+ ions. We also report the optimum fabrication process for maximum red emission at 614 nm from the samples where we show a strong dependence on the annealing temperature and the Eu3+ concentration in the sample. The maximum red emission is observed with 12 mol% Eu3+ annealed at 450 °C. This work provides a better understanding of the energy transfer mechanism from ZnO-nc to Eu3+ ions and is important for applications in photonics, especially for light emitting devices. %G English %L hal-02452784 %U https://utt.hal.science/hal-02452784 %~ CNRS %~ UNIV-TROYES %~ P2MN %~ UTT %~ UTT-L2N