XAS-XRD investigations on the effect of different synthetic routes and annealing conditions on the design of inorganic materials

The aim of this proposal is to investigate to which extent different synthetic routes, i.e. inverse miniemulsion (wet-chemistry) and ball milling (solid state-chemistry) affect the local structure of photoluminescent materials, e.g. calcium molybdate (CaMoO4) doped with Eu3+ ions, and correlate these findings with the observed optical and chemico-physical properties. We aim to evaluate the dopant-induced variations on the structure (electronic, short- and long-range) through a combination of X-ray absorption spectroscopy measurements (at Eu L3-edge and Mo K-edge) and X-ray diffraction. In particular. experiments will be performed in situ while annealing at 900 °C, both in vacuum and in air. With these, we further focus on understanding the details of the annealing process, in either vacuum or air, since the atmosphere of the process was found to affect the final photoluminescent and conductivity properties of calcium molybdate to a different extent depending on the synthetic route.