The highly efficient and stable near-infrared phosphor Ca3MgSnGe3O12: Cr3+ for multifunctional application

The investigation of efficient and stable near-infrared (NIR) luminescent materials is crucial for rapidly developing near-infrared spectroscopic techniques. Herein, NIR phosphors Ca3MgSnGe3O12: Cr3+ with ultra thermal stability and high internal quantum yield (IQY) are explored. The emission intensity remained at 91.75 %@423 K of room temperature and the IQY/EQE reaches 91.41 %/34.04 % after doping the H3BO3 flux agent for optimization. Moreover, a single luminescence center was identified by cryogenic photo luminescence spectroscopy (PL) from 4 K to 300 K and lifetime decay curve. Importantly, NIR light can easily removes all kinds of background interference that cannot be easily eliminated by visible light, which is not only widely used in night vision and biological tissue penetration, but also has higher application prospects in NIR fingerprint detection. Moreover, it clearly displays high level of fingerprint details under high temperature conditions and after water immersion, thus it is perfectly suited for using in Automatic Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) systems. Therefore, Ca3MgSnGe3O12: Cr3+ NIR pc-LEDs have great potential for latent fingerprint detection at actual crime scenes.