L.

Krishna Bharat
Electronics and Radio Engineering Department
Optoelectronics and Nanodevice Lab

Introduction

Phosphor, most generally, is a substance that exhibits the phenomenon of

luminescence. Somewhat confusingly, this includes both phosphorescent
materials, which show a slow decay in brightness (> 1 ms), and fluorescent
materials, where the emission decay takes place over tens of nanoseconds.
Phosphors are often transition metal compounds or rare earth compounds of
various types.

Fundamental Aspects
Photoluminescence
Energy transfer

CIE chromaticity coordinates and color temperature

CRI (Color Rendering Index)

Photoluminescence
Luminescence is defined as the emission of
electromagnetic radiation in excess of thermal
radiation
The PL in a material usually involves the following
processes
excitation of the activator to a higher energy state (10-11s);
relaxation of the activator ion to the lowest energy level of the
excited state (10-8 s); and
emission of a lower-energy photon as the activator ion returns
from its excited state to the ground state (10-910 s).

Energy Transfer
Donor
Acceptor

Transfer Probability
PDA = 2/ |<D*,A|HDA|D,A*>|2 gD(E)gA(E)dE

CIE Chromaticity Coordinates

and Color Temperature
The Commission Internationale de lEclairage (CIE) system.
By a piece of mathematic legerdemain, it is necessary
only to quote the quantity of two of the reference
stimuli to define a color since the three quantities
(x, y, z) are made always to sum to 1.

Color temperature (Kelvin) is the absolute temperature

at which a blackbody radiator must be operated to have a
chromaticity equal to that of the light source.
Incandescent bulb color temperature is the temperature of the filament.

Color temperatures of the pc-WLEDs is Correlated Color Temperature (CCT).

Low color temperature - warmer(more yellow-red) light.
High color temperature colder(more blue) light.

CRI (Color Rendering Index)

CRI (Ra) is a measure of the degree to which the
perceived colors of objects illuminated by the source
conform to those of the same objects illuminated by a
reference source for specified conditions.

Material Synthesis and Fabrication

Solid
State
Reaction

Simple and suitable for mass production

Limitations
Poor homogeneity and high calcination temperatures
Relatively large size and less controllable
Difficulty in preparation of single phase compounds
Easily introduce additional impurities and defects
which greatly reduces luminous efficacy

Solution
Based
Chemical
Synthesis

Hydrothermal Synthesis

Sol-Gel Synthesis
Chemical Co-Precipitation
Combustion Synthesis
Spray Pyrolysis

Solution Based Chemical Synthesis

Autoclave
Low reaction temperature
Hydrothermal
Controllable size, phase and morphology
Synthesis

Sol-gel
Synthesis

Dates back to 1846 when Ebelenen discovered the formation of SiO2 gel by hydrolyzing Si(Oet)4
Solution hydrolysis reactive monomer condensation sol gelation gel further heat
treatment

Oxide-based and fluoride-based phosphors

Smaller grain size and homogenous distribution of dopant ion
Chemical CoRepeated washing and calcination
Precipitation

Combustion
Synthesis

Spray
Pyrolysis

Short processing time, low processing temperature

Low cost and high yield, as well as good ability to achieve high purity
Based on exothermic redox reactions

Synthesize high purity and homogenous ceramic powders

Morphology can be controlled to some degree by choice of precursors, concentration, droplet size and
residence time in furnace

Lanthanides (or) Rare Earths and

its applications

Emissions from rare earths

Europium red(3+), blue(2+)
Samarium red
Terbium green

Erbium green
Dysprosium blue
Thulium blue
Cerium blue

Different host materials with rare

earth doping

YAG:Ce phosphor particles prepared

by ultrasonic spray pyrolysis
1400oC

Phosphors excited by blue-LEDs

Blue LED

Blue LED

Blue LED

Phosphors excited by UV-LEDs

Comparison

conclusion