Study on visible emission of Cu-ion-doped perovskite hafnate in view of excitation energy dependence

We studied on the visible emission of Cu-ion-doped perovskite hafnate $SrHfO_3$ (SHO:Cu) with the photo-excitation energy dependence. The polycrystalline SHO:Cu samples were newly synthesized in the solid state reaction method. From the X-ray diffraction measurement it was found that the crystalline structure of SHO:Cu is nearly identical to that of undoped $SrHfO_3$. Interestingly, the photoluminescence excitation (PLE) spectra change significantly with the emission energy, which is linked to the strong dependence of the visible emission on the photo-excitation energy. This unusual emission behavior is likely to be associated with the mixed valence states of the doped Cu ions, which were revealed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. We compared our finding of tunable visible emission in the SHO:Cu compounds with the cases of similar materials, $SrTiO_3$ and $SrZrO_3$ with Cu-ion-doping.