The purpose of this study was production of photoluminescent pigments by adding different ratios of Eu/Dy to SrAl2O4: Nd3+ composites. Presence of Eu and Dy in the pigments, alone or together causes varying fluorescence and phosphorescence properties regarding their emission intensity and afterglow length. The resulted differences in morphology and crystal structure of these pigments were measured by spectroscopic methods. The interesting fact in this work is the emission type of the pigments before and after the reduction process; as the pigments were white powders showing strong red emission under UV irradiation and after the reduction process, they showed strongly visible afterglows. Six samples with different Eu/Dy ratios were synthesized and named samples N1 to N6. They underwent the thermal reduction process and the resulting samples were named N1A to N6A. The phosphorescence analysis showed an intensity count of 518 for sample N6A, the fluorescence showed an intensity of 797 counts for sample N6A, and the sample N4A showed an afterglow time of about 5 h with a strong initial afterglow of about 20 minutes.

Keywords: Microwave synthesis, Phosphorescence, Fluorescence, Dopant Phosphors