Rare-earth aluminate garnets are an important family of multi-functional ceramic materials. They are useful in phosphors and lasers – often with medical applications such as cancer diagnosis and treatment. Researchers have tried to improve the chemical stability and luminescence of these materials and to understand their novel emission features.
In their review, Ji-Guang Li and Yoshio Sakka, of Japan’s National Institute for Materials Science, discuss the ways to stabilise the GAG lattice and its performance in scintillators and “down-conversion phosphors”, where high-energy photons are converted to low-energy ones.
Anti-site defects, where atoms of different types exchange their positions, are common in these materials. These can have profound effects on emissions as the atoms interact with excited electrons. This needs to be better understood, say the authors, in order to improve the overall performance of this class of optical materials.