Micro-environment of the Eu interstitial in the β-Si6-zAlzOzN8-z:Eu2+ green phosphor

DOI

<p>The precise atomic-scale structure around Eu<sup>2+ </sup>activators in the β-Si<sub>6-z</sub>Al<sub>z</sub>O<sub>z</sub>N<sub>8-z</sub>:Eu<sup>2+</sup> commercial green phosphor remains elusive. We use the first-principles ΔSCF excited-state method, embedding of the interatomic force constants for supercells up to 3501 atoms, and Huang-Rhys theory to clarify this issue. Monte Carlo exploration is used to identify representative low-energy structural models spanning different levels of Al/O concentration z.  For the lowest-energy structure at low z, our computed photoluminescence spectrum reproduces the experimental vibronic peaks at 6K with excellent agreement in peak positions and intensities, validating the Eu-N<sub>9</sub> coordination model with Al, O, and Eu confined to the same crystallographic plane. Analysis of the low-energy structures reveals that the electron-phonon coupling is weak (S ≈ 2.15) with a robust characteristic phonon signature across different Al/O arrangements, explaining the surprising persistence of resolved phonon replicas with increasing z. We explain the experimentally observed red-shift of emission with increasing z through systematic trends in zero-phonon line energies, modest increases in Huang-Rhys factors, and larger configurational diversity at higher compositions.</p>

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.24435/materialscloud:4a-g6
Related Identifier https://archive.materialscloud.org/communities/mcarchive
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.24435/materialscloud:bq-5m
Metadata Access https://archive.materialscloud.org/oai2d?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_dc&identifier=oai:materialscloud.org:02rcd-nc341
Provenance
Creator Bouquiaux, Julien; Poncé, Samuel; Jia, Yongchao; Mikami, Masayoshi; Gonze, Xavier
Publisher Materials Cloud
Publication Year 2026
Rights info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess; Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode
OpenAccess true
Contact archive(at)materialscloud.org
Representation
Language English
Resource Type info:eu-repo/semantics/other
Format application/zip; text/markdown
Discipline Materials Science and Engineering