Comparative study of the luminescence properties of macro- and nanocrystalline MgO using synchrotron radiation

MgO nano-powder with an average crystallite size of nanoparticles ranging 10-15 nm was synthesized using the extractive-pyrolytic method and was studied by room temperature VUV spectroscopy under synchrotron radiation excitation. Comparative analysis of their luminescent properties with that of mac- rocrystalline powder analogues and an MgO single crystal, grown by the arc-fusion method, has been per- formed under excitation by pulsed VUV synchrotron radiation. Special attention was paid to VUV spectral range, which is not reachable with commonly used lamp and laser sources. A considerable blue shift of about 0.3 eV in the excitation spectra of 2.95 eV emission band, was revealed in nanocrystalline MgO samples.