Negative thermal expansion and broad band photoluminescence in a novel material of ZrScMo(2)VO(12)

In this paper, we present a novel material with the formula of ZrScMo(2)VO(12) for the first time. It was demonstrated that this material exhibits not only excellent negative thermal expansion (NTE) property over a wide temperature range (at least from 150 to 823 K), but also very intense photoluminescence covering the entire visible region. Structure analysis shows that ZrScMo(2)VO(12) has an orthorhombic structure with the space group Pbcn (No. 60) at room temperature. A phase transition from monoclinic to orthorhombic structure between 70 and 90 K is also revealed. The intense white light emission is tentatively attributed to the n- and p-type like co-doping effect which creates not only the donor- and acceptor-like states in the band gap, but also donor-acceptor pairs and even bound exciton complexes. The excellent NTE property integrated with the intense white-light emission implies a potential application of this material in light emitting diode and other photoelectric devices.