Tunable luminescence and morphological evolution of facile synthesized zinc borate/carbon dots composites for NUV-WLEDs

摘要： A series of zinc borate/carbon dots composites (ZBH/yNCDs) were successfully synthesized under hydrothermal conditions. The influences of yellow N-doped carbon dots (yNCDs) content on the structure, morphologies and luminescence properties of the zinc borate (4ZnO·B2O3·H2O, ZBH) were investigated. With increasing yNCDs content, ZBH in the ZBH/yNCDs composites gradually lost water and eventually became ZB/yNCDs (4ZnO·B2O3, ZB) composites. Meanwhile, the tunable luminescence of ZBH/yNCDs composites and the morphological evolution from rod-like to blocks to sphere-like were achieved by varying the yNCDs content in the zinc borate matrix. The results revealed that the ZBH/yNCDs composite with sphere-like morphology has the strongest white light emission at 395 nm excitation wavelength. Therefore, the ZBH/yNCDs composites may be used as phosphors in the near-ultraviolet (NUV) excitation white-light illumination field. The discovery of this work may also provide new inspirations for solving the self-quenching effect of carbon dots in the solid-state display applications.