Molten Salt Synthesized CaTa₄O₁₁:Er³⁺/Yb³⁺ with Superior Upconversion Luminescence

Low phonon tantalate-based phosphors with a layer structure are considered to have excellent upconversion luminescence (UCL) intensity, which could be reduced due to the existence of impure phase defects and inappropriate doped rare earth ions. To improve their UCL performance, we have prepared single-phase CaTa₄O₁₁:Er³⁺/Yb³⁺ samples by a molten salt synthesis (MSS) using KCl as the reaction medium and compared its UCL properties with counterparts made by a conventional solid-state reaction (SSR) in this study. We have demonstrated that the MSS samples have a much higher UCL intensity under 980 nm laser excitation than the SSR ones due to accurate replacement of Ca²⁺ sites by Er³⁺/Yb³⁺ in high-purity single-phase MSS samples. We have further enhanced the green UCL intensity of the MSS samples by 1.57 times via acid picking (AP). Under 980 nm laser excitation at a high powder density of 61.3 W/cm², the green UCL intensity of the MSS-AP samples can reach 3.72 times that of the SSR-AP samples. For potential luminescence thermometry applications, the maximum absolute sensitivity (S_A) of the MSS-AP samples reaches 0.01316 K^-1 at 501 K based on the luminescence intensity ratio. This study shows that CaTa₄O₁₁:Er³⁺/Yb³⁺ phosphors prepared by the MSS method are single-phase samples with excellent pure green UCL as a suitable temperature sensing material.