Morphology and luminescence of nanocrystalline Nb2O5 doped with Eu3+

The synthesis of nanocrystalline Nb2O5:Eu3+ has been achieved by using a Pechini procedure. The obtained materials are single phase niobia with the orthorhombic structure, average crystallite size around 25 nm and average lattice strain of about 0.002. TEM images show that the particles are rectangular and reasonably isolated. The luminescence of the Eu3+ ions in the niobia lattice is efficient and affected by a strong inhomogeneous broadening, due to an important disorder around the lanthanide ions