Fluorescence Lifetime-Based Luminescent Thermometry Material with Lifetime Varying over a Factor of 50

Recently, the growing demand for temperature detection is pushing forward the flourishing development of noncontact optical thermometry. Herein, a new red phosphor Sr2InTa1-xO6:xMn4+ (SIT:xMn4+) was first constructed and systematically investigated. Based on the fairly rapid decline of the lifetime from 0.403 to 0.008 ms by increasing the temperature from 25 to 450 K, a noncontact optical thermometer can be made from phosphor SIT:0.003Mn4+ with Sr = 1.396% K-1 at 375 K and Sa = 0.0012 K-1 at 300 K. Because the luminescence is based on the outermost 3d orbits of Mn4+, the lifetime of SIT:xMn4+ is quite sensitive to the temperature, leading to a rapid decline of the lifetime with the increase in temperature. Moreover, multiple rounds of variable-temperature studies were performed to demonstrate the stability and reversibility of SIT:0.003Mn4+. This work suggests that Mn4+-phosphors are promising candidates for application as optical thermometric material.