Facile Synthesis of Lanthanide (Ce,Eu, Tb,Ce/Tb,Yb/Er,Yb/Ho,and Yb/Tm)‐Doped LnF3 and LnOF Porous Sub‐Microspheres with Multicolor Emissions

Monodisperse YF₃ and YOF porous sub‐microspheres were synthesized by using a novel sacrificing template method with amorphous Y(OH)CO₃ ? x H₂O as the precursors and the template. It was found that the size and shape were well maintained, and the condensed precursor was transformed into uniform porous structures after fluoridation. By fine‐tuning the feed of the fluorine source, the final product could be converted from YF₃ to YOF. A possible growth mechanism is proposed for the uniform porous YF₃ structure and the porous yolk–shell‐like YOF structure. The luminescence properties showed that the as‐synthesized YF₃:Ln³⁺ (Ln=Eu, Tb, Ce, Ce/Tb, Yb/Er, Yb/Ho, and Yb/Tm) products exhibited strong multicolor emissions, which included down‐/upconversion and energy‐transfer processes. Additionally, YOX (X=Cl and Br) could be obtained if a different halogen source was used during calcination. However, the spheres were almost completely destroyed. Our novel synthetic route can also be extended to other lanthanide fluorides (REF₃, RE=Gd, Lu), which may open a facile way to fabricate novel porous nanostructures.