Eu(III)-doped barium tellurooxyphosphate phosphor with orange-red emission

$${\hbox {Eu}}³⁺$$ photoluminescence (PL) is studied in the tellurooxyphosphate, $${\hbox {Ba}}₂\hbox {TeO} ({\hbox {PO}}₄)₂$$ , host. A series of phosphor compositions with varying concentrations of $${\hbox {Eu}}³⁺$$ dopant in $${\hbox {Ba}}₂\hbox {TeO} ({\hbox {PO}}₄)₂$$ are synthesized by high temperature solid-state reaction and the PL spectra are recorded. Under 395 nm wavelength excitation, the emission spectrum shows a single peak corresponding to the non-degenerate transition, $${}⁵ {\hbox {D}}₀\rightarrow {}⁷{\hbox {F}}₀$$ indicating that $${\hbox {Eu}}³⁺$$ preferentially occupies a single crystallographic site. The peak due to the degenerate hypersensitive $${}⁵ {\hbox {D}}₀ \rightarrow {}⁷{\hbox {F}}₂$$ electric dipole transition of $${\hbox {Eu}}³⁺$$ in the emission spectrum indicates that the site occupied by $${\hbox {Eu}}³⁺$$ in the tellurooxyphosphate host lattice is non-centrosymmetric. The CIE coordinate values are $$x = 0.61$$ and $$y = 0.34$$ and are found to be close to the values of the reference phosphor $${\hbox {Y}}₂ {\hbox {O}}₃{:}{\hbox {Eu}}³⁺$$ .