Synthesis of novel halloysite@YF3:Ce3+,Tb3+ nanocomposite for enhanced luminescent properties

A novel [email protected]3: Ce3+, Tb3+ anocomposite with strong luminescent properties was designed and synthesized by a facile direct precipitation strategy. Owing to the halloysite as a support, it can significantly prevent the aggregation of YF3:Ce3+,Tb3+ and the distribution of YF3:Ce3+,Tb3+ on halloysite was highly uniform. Importantly, due to the unique surface-interface-dielectric multiple confinement (SIDMC) effects, the as-harvested [email protected]3:Ce3+,Tb3+ nanocomposite exhibited excellent luminescent performance. Compared with YF3:Ce3+,Tb3+, the luminescence intensity of [email protected]3:Ce3+,Tb3+ nanocomposite is significantly enhanced by about 6 times under 255 nm excitation. However, the fluorescence lifetime of [email protected]3:Ce3+,Tb3+ nanocomposite (7.21 ms) is shorter than that of YF3:Ce3+,Tb3+ nanoparticles (8.34 ms). This finding indicated that halloysite can change the luminescent properties of YF3:Ce3+,Tb3+ nanoparticles through an SIDMC effect. The combination of halloysite and YF3:Ce3+,Tb3+ nanoparticles not only endowed halloysite with special properties, and effectively tuned the luminescent properties of YF3:Ce3+,Tb3+ nanoparticles, thereby improving the utility of halloysite and YF3:Ce3+,Tb3+ nanoparticles. The research supplies an insight on the development of natural mineral-based luminescent materials, and hopefully it could promote them application in many fields.