Structural, magnetic and up-conversion properties of YF3: Yb/Ln (Ln = Er, Tm, Ho) solid solutions

In this paper, we investigated YF 3 : Yb/Er, YF 3 : Yb/Tm and YF 3 : Yb/Ho solid solutions prepared by reaction of an appropriate amount of oxides with ammonium difluoride (NH 4 HF 2 ) as a fluorinating agent. These samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), magnetic measurements and up-conversion (UC) photoluminescence spectra. The results show that all samples are single-phase and crystallize in an orthorhombic crystal structure of the β-YF 3 structure type. Above 100 K, the measured molar magnetic susceptibility was fitted by the Curie-Weiss law and the average effective magnetic moments for the observed samples were obtained.  All the samples showed a pure paramagnetic behaviour. When doped with lanthanide elements (Yb/Er, Yb/Tm, Yb/Ho), YF 3 solid solutions can emit characteristic green, red, blue and near IR light under the excitation of a 980 nm laser diode.