Pr3+ doped Y3GaO6 luminescent thermometer for high temperature conditions

Contactless thermometer based on fluorescence intensity ratio shows unparalleled characteristics compared with traditional contact thermometers. However, few materials are suitable for high temperature (above 573 K) measurement. In this work, Pr3+ was selected as the emitter and Y3GaO6:xPr3+ luminescent thermometers were designed. The phase, crystal structure and morphology were identified using X-ray diffraction, Rietveld refinement and scanning electron microscope. The spectra with multiple ranges were temperature sensitive due to the cross-relaxion mechanism that occurs in the luminescence process. The parameters for temperature measurement were determined based on the peak intensity ratio of 506 and 610 nm at different temperatures (from 293 to 823 K). Y3GaO6:0.01Pr3+ displays excellent temperature sensitive performance, in which the relative sensitivity values increase along with the temperature in a wide temperature range and reach 4.09 % K−1. The thermometric visualization in Y3GaO6:xPr3+ can be achieved due to the widely varying luminescence colors at different temperatures.