Our samples possess a 25 at.% erbium concentration, which is higher than the concentrations reported in previous studies [33]. This also agrees well with the results of Yang et al. [29], who observed the predominance of green emission and the absence of red emission in flower microcrystallites that had been low doped with 1 at.% Er:Lu2O3. Furthermore, as it can be observed in Figure 8, there is a change on the blue/green/red emission ratio when the nanocrystals are embedded in the PMMA. This change could be related to a change in the up-conversion mechanism affected

by the presence of the high-energy phonons of the polymer, favoring the red emission in relation to the green emission which has decreased and the blue emission which has totally disappeared. For lighting applications, it is interesting to calculate the different parameters, which Veliparib nmr FRAX597 characterizes the color of the emission (see

Table 2). The International Commission on Illumination (CIE) coordinates (x, y) specify where the point corresponding to each emission is located on the chromaticity diagram. In this diagram, the color of the light emitted is factored by the sensitivity curves measured for the human eye (color matching functions) (Figure 9). The dominant wavelength is the point of interception in the spectrum locus for the line crossing the white point and the point of each emission, and the purity is the saturation of a particular color. The greater the purity, the more saturated selleck chemicals the color appears, that is, the more similar the color is to its spectrally pure color at the dominant wavelength. The values in

Table 2 show that embedding the nanocrystals inside the PMMA matrix does not strongly affect their colorimetric properties. Furthermore, the red emission has the greatest purity and therefore the most saturated color. Figure 9 CIE chromaticity diagram showing the emission colors for (Er,Yb):Lu 2 O 3 Ureohydrolase and (Er,Yb):Lu 2 O 3 nanocrystals embedded in PMMA microcolumns. Table 2 Summary of CIE properties of (Er,Yb):Lu 2 O 3 nanocrystals and (Er,Yb):Lu 2 O 3 nanocrystals embedded in PMMA microcolumns   Blue emission Green emission Red emission x y Purity Dominant wavelength x y Purity Dominant wavelength x y Purity Dominant wavelength (%) (nm) (%) (nm) (%) (nm) (Er,Yb):Lu2O3 nanocrystals 0.1746 0.0137 97 375 0.3402 0.6423 96 556 0.7222 0.2777 100 643 (Er,Yb):Lu2O3 nanocrystals embedded in PMMA 0.1753 0.0132 97 362 0.3016 0.6661 92 550-554 0.7209 0.2789 99 642 Conclusions The modified Pechini method was successfully applied to obtain cubic nanocrystals of Lu0.990Er0.520Yb0.490O3. Scherrer’s approach and electronic microscopy gave us an average size of about 15 to 30 nm with 44% dispersion size. The (Er,Yb):Lu2O3 nanocrystals were embedded in PMMA microcolumns prepared by vacuum infiltration. The PMMA columns solidified inside the micropores of a silicon matrix to form 2D disordered arrays.