Rare earth ions doped polymer composites for photonic applications

Polyethyleneoxide (PEO) has been known for its high thermal stability with semi-crystalline nature displaying both amorphous and crystallinephases at room temperature. Polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) has beenchosen as the second polymer component for preparing polymerblend with PEO, because of its unique characteristics. Inrecent years, a special attention has been focused to explore thepossibility of using polymer materials with rare-earth (RE) ionsand their complexes as potential optical materials due to theircapability of exhibiting novel and unusual properties. The luminescence of rare earth complexes as light conversion molecular devices (LCMD) and these could constitute a class of new materials with potential applications. Samarium (III), Europium (III), Terbium (III) and Dysprosium (III) are the most important elements among thelanthanides as they exhibit very strong luminescence in visible region. These ions together show very encouraging luminescence properties due to an energy transfer between them. Here we report on the results concerning the photoluminescence properties based on energy-transfer process from rare earth ions co-doped in polymer composite films.