Sol-gel synthesis and characterization of terbium doped tin-oxide*

Rare earth doped tin oxide nanocrystals emit visible light when excited in the ultra-violet. Using a sol-gel process, we embedded Tb$^{3+}$ doped SnO$_2$ nanocrystals in silica glass and characterized the samples using x-ray diffraction, photoexcitation and emission spectroscopy, and transmission electron microscopy. We synthesized four sets of samples, SnO$_2$-99SiO$_2$, 3SnO$_2$-97SiO$_2$, 5SnO$_2$-95SiO$_2$, 7SnO$_2$-93SiO$_2$ with constant weight ratios of Tb$^{3+}$ to measure the effects of varying the molar concentrations of Tin-Oxide on the photoluminescence properties of the nanocrystals.