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1. Optical properties of undoped, Eu 3+ doped and Li + co-doped Y 2 Hf 2 O 7 nanoparticles and polymer nanocomposite films

   https://doi.org/10.1039/c9qi01181a  

   Gupta, Santosh K. ; Zuniga, Jose P. ; Abdou, Maya ; Ghosh, P. S. ; Mao, Yuanbing ( January 2020 , Inorganic Chemistry Frontiers)

   Desirable phosphors for lighting, scintillation and composite films must have good light absorption properties, high concentration quenching, high quantum efficiency, a narrow color emission, and so forth. In this work, we first show that undoped yttrium hafnate Y 2 Hf 2 O 7 (YHO) nanoparticles (NPs) display dual blue and red bands after excitation using 330 nm light. Based on density functional theory (DFT) calculations, these two emission bands are correlated with the defect states arising in the band-gap region of YHO owing to the presence of neutral and charged oxygen defects. Once doped with Eu 3+ ions (YHOE), the YHO NPs show a bright red emission, a long excited state lifetime and stable color coordinates upon near-UV and X-ray excitation. Concentration quenching is active when Eu 3+ doping reaches 10 mol% with a critical distance of ∼4.43 Å. This phenomenon indicates a high Eu 3+ solubility within the YHO host and the absence of Eu 3+ clusters. More importantly, the optical performance of the YHOE NPs has been further improved by lithium co-doping. The origin of the emission, structural stability, and role of Li + -co-doping are explored both experimentally and theoretically. DFT calculation results demonstrate that Li + -co-doping increases the covalent character of the Eu 3+ –O 2− bonding in the EuO 8 polyhedra. Furthermore, the YHOE NPs have been dispersed into polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) to make transparent nanocomposite films, which show strong red emission under excitation at 270 and 393 nm. Overall, we demonstrate that the YHO NPs with Eu 3+ and (Eu 3+ /Li + ) doping have a high emission intensity and quantum efficiency under UV and X-ray excitation, which makes them suitable for use as phosphors, scintillators and transparent films for lighting, imaging and detection applications. 

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2. Interlayer magnetophononic coupling in MnBi2Te4

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-29545-5  

   Padmanabhan, Hari ; Poore, Maxwell ; Kim, Peter K. ; Koocher, Nathan Z. ; Stoica, Vladimir A. ; Puggioni, Danilo ; Hugo) Wang, Huaiyu ; Shen, Xiaozhe ; Reid, Alexander H. ; Gu, Mingqiang ; et al ( December 2022 , Nature Communications)

   Abstract The emergence of magnetism in quantum materials creates a platform to realize spin-based applications in spintronics, magnetic memory, and quantum information science. A key to unlocking new functionalities in these materials is the discovery of tunable coupling between spins and other microscopic degrees of freedom. We present evidence for interlayer magnetophononic coupling in the layered magnetic topological insulator MnBi 2 Te 4 . Employing magneto-Raman spectroscopy, we observe anomalies in phonon scattering intensities across magnetic field-driven phase transitions, despite the absence of discernible static structural changes. This behavior is a consequence of a magnetophononic wave-mixing process that allows for the excitation of zone-boundary phonons that are otherwise ‘forbidden’ by momentum conservation. Our microscopic model based on density functional theory calculations reveals that this phenomenon can be attributed to phonons modulating the interlayer exchange coupling. Moreover, signatures of magnetophononic coupling are also observed in the time domain through the ultrafast excitation and detection of coherent phonons across magnetic transitions. In light of the intimate connection between magnetism and topology in MnBi 2 Te 4 , the magnetophononic coupling represents an important step towards coherent on-demand manipulation of magnetic topological phases. 

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3. Tuning of Optical Phonons in α-MoO3–VO2 Multilayers

   https://doi.org/doi.org/10.1021/acsami.1c12320  

   Dereshgi, Sina ; Larciprete, Maria ; Centini, Marco ; Murthy, Akshay ; Tang, Kechao ; Wu, Junqiao ; Dravid, Vinayak ; Aydin, Koray ( October 2021 , ACS applied materials interfaces)

   Merging the properties of VO2 and van der Waals (vdW) materials has given rise to novel tunable photonic devices. Despite recent studies on the effect of the phase change of VO2 on tuning near-field optical response of phonon polaritons in the infrared range, active tuning of optical phonons (OPhs) using far-field techniques has been scarce. Here, we investigate the tunability of OPhs of α-MoO3 in a multilayer structure with VO2. Our experiments show the frequency and intensity tuning of 2 cm–1 and 11% for OPhs in the [100] direction and 2 cm–1 and 28% for OPhs in the [010] crystal direction of α-MoO3. Using the effective medium theory and dielectric models of each layer, we verify these findings with simulations. We then use loss tangent analysis and remove the effect of the substrate to understand the origin of these spectral characteristics. We expect that these findings will assist in intelligently designing tunable photonic devices for infrared applications, such as tunable camouflage and radiative cooling devices. 

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4. On comparison of luminescence properties of La 2 Zr 2 O 7 and La 2 Hf 2 O 7 nanoparticles

   https://doi.org/10.1111/jace.16693  

   Gupta, Santosh K. ; Abdou, Maya ; Ghosh, Partha S. ; Zuniga, Jose P. ; Manoharan, Ezhilarasan ; Kim, HyeongJun ; Mao, Yuanbing ( July 2019 , Journal of the American Ceramic Society)

   Unveiling the underlying mechanisms of properties of functional materials, including the luminescence differences among similar pyrochlores A₂B₂O₇, opens new gateways to select proper hosts for various optoelectronic applications by scientists and engineers. For example, although La₂Zr₂O₇(LZO) and La₂Hf₂O₇(LHO) pyrochlores have similar chemical compositional and crystallographic structural features, they demonstrate different luminescence properties both before and after doped with Eu³⁺ions. Based on our earlier work, LHO‐based nanophosphors display higher photo‐ and radioluminescence intensity, higher quantum efficiency, and longer excited state lifetime compared to LZO‐based nanophosphors. Moreover, under electronic O²⁻→Zr⁴⁺/Hf⁴⁺transition excitation at 306 nm, undoped LHO nanoparticles (NPs) have only violet blue emission, whereas LZO NPs show violet blue and red emissions. In this study, we have combined experimental and density functional theory (DFT) based theoretical calculation to explain the observed results. First, we calculated the density of state (DOS) based on DFT and studied the energetics of ionized oxygen vacancies in the band gaps of LZO and LHO theoretically, which explain their underlying luminescence difference. For Eu³⁺‐doped NPs, we performed emission intensity and lifetime calculations and found that the LHOE NPs have higher host to dopant energy transfer efficiency than the LZOE NPs (59.3% vs 24.6%), which accounts for the optical performance superiority of the former over the latter. Moreover, by corroborating our experimental data with the DFT calculations, we suggest that the Eu³⁺doping states in LHO present at exact energy position (both in majority and minority spin components) where oxygen defect states are located unlike those in LZO. Lastly, both the NPs show negligible photobleaching highlighting their potential for bioimaging applications. This current report provides a deeper understanding of the advantages of LHO over LZO as an advanced host for phosphors, scintillators, and fluoroimmunoassays.

    

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5. Excitation mechanisms in the intracluster filaments surrounding brightest cluster galaxies

   https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202039730  

   Polles, F. L. ; Salomé, P. ; Guillard, P. ; Godard, B. ; Pineau des Forêts, G. ; Olivares, V. ; Beckmann, R. S. ; Canning, R. E. ; Combes, F. ; Dubois, Y. ; et al ( July 2021 , Astronomy & Astrophysics)

   null (Ed.)

   Context. The excitation of the filamentary gas structures surrounding giant elliptical galaxies at the center of cool-core clusters, also known as brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs), is key to our understanding of active galactic nucleus (AGN) feedback, and of the impact of environmental and local effects on star formation. Aims. We investigate the contribution of thermal radiation from the cooling flow surrounding BCGs to the excitation of the filaments. We explore the effects of small levels of extra heating (turbulence), and of metallicity, on the optical and infrared lines. Methods. Using the C LOUDY code, we modeled the photoionization and photodissociation of a slab of gas of optical depth A V  ≤ 30 mag at constant pressure in order to calculate self-consistently all of the gas phases, from ionized gas to molecular gas. The ionizing source is the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) and soft X-ray radiation emitted by the cooling gas. We tested these models comparing their predictions to the rich multi-wavelength observations from optical to submillimeter, now achieved in cool core clusters. Results. Such models of self-irradiated clouds, when reaching sufficiently large A V , lead to a cloud structure with ionized, atomic, and molecular gas phases. These models reproduce most of the multi-wavelength spectra observed in the nebulae surrounding the BCGs, not only the low-ionization nuclear emission region like optical diagnostics, [O  III ] λ 5007 Å/H β , [N  II ] λ 6583 Å/H α , and ([S  II ] λ 6716 Å+[S  II ] λ 6731 Å)/H α , but also the infrared emission lines from the atomic gas. [O  I ] λ 6300 Å/H α , instead, is overestimated across the full parameter space, except for very low A V . The modeled ro-vibrational H 2 lines also match observations, which indicates that near- and mid-infrared H 2 lines are mostly excited by collisions between H 2 molecules and secondary electrons produced naturally inside the cloud by the interaction between the X-rays and the cold gas in the filament. However, there is still some tension between ionized and molecular line tracers (i.e., CO), which requires optimization of the cloud structure and the density of the molecular zone. The limited range of parameters over which predictions match observations allows us to constrain, in spite of degeneracies in the parameter space, the intensity of X-ray radiation bathing filaments, as well as some of their physical properties like A V or the level of turbulent heating rate. Conclusions. The reprocessing of the EUV and X-ray radiation from the plasma cooling is an important powering source of line emission from filaments surrounding BCGs. C LOUDY self-irradiated X-ray excitation models coupled with a small level of turbulent heating manage to simultaneously reproduce a large number of optical-to-infrared line ratios when all the gas phases (from ionized to molecular) are modeled self-consistently. Releasing some of the simplifications of our model, like the constant pressure, or adding the radiation fields from the AGN and stars, as well as a combination of matter- and radiation-bounded cloud distribution, should improve the predictions of line emission from the different gas phases. 

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