Saiful Islam 2019247321

Quantum Efficiency
Quantum efficiency (QE) is the measure of the effectiveness of an imaging device to convert incident
photons into electrons. For example, if a sensor had a QE of 100% and was exposed to 100 photons, it
would produce 100 electrons of signal.
In practice, sensors are never 100% efficient, and different sensor technologies have different QE
values. The highest-end scientific cameras can achieve up to 95% QE but this is dependent on the
wavelength of light being detected, as seen in figure 1.

Figure 1: The quantum efficiency (QE) of a 95% quantum efficient sensor at different photon
wavelengths. 95% QE is possible at 500-600 nm wavelengths (green/yellow) but it is less efficient at
shorter (violet, 300-400 nm) and longer (infrared, 800-1000 nm) wavelengths. This particular sensor
also has a peak in QE at near-UV wavelengths, around 220-250 nm.

In the recent, along with the development of luminaires and devices using LEDs and organic Els,
producing brighter and more power saving luminaires, which means more efficient luminaires, has
become target. Various phosphors are used to build the luminaires; thus, evaluation of the phosphors
is essential. Traditionally, “comparative evaluation” which is a method to obtain quantum efficiency
of the unknown sample by comparing to a standard substance whose quantum efficiency is known has
been used. However, this validation method is not convenient since it depends on the reliability of the
standards quantum efficiency, it has restriction of excitation wavelength and solution etc., and its
procedure is complex requiring the preparation of both a standard and unknown sample and the
several corrections.
Definition in the Quantum Efficiency Measurement:
When a phosphor is exposed to excitation light such as
Xe, it absorbed the light and is excited from its ground
state to an excited state. Then, it relaxes to its lowest
excited state, and to the ground state emitting light.
This emitted light is fluorescent emission. It is called
fluorescence if the emission of the stops when the
excitation light extinguished, or phosphorescence if the
emission of the lasts. As shown in the figure, when a
phosphor sample is exposed to excitation light, it
absorbed by the sample is observed as reflected light in
the case of the powder samples or as transmitted light
in the case of solution samples. Absorbed light is
obtained by subtracting the reflected light from the
excitation light.
External quantum efficiency: Ratio of the number of emitted photons to the number of excited
photons.
Saiful Islam 2019247321

Internal quantum efficiency: Ration of the number od the emitted photons to the number of
absorbed photons.