An investigation into novel red emitting phosphors and their applications

Abstract

New red emitting phosphors, based on the double tungstate/molybdates, were discovered. Some were able to retain their luminous efficacy after substituting Y3+ for Eu3+, reducing the cost of the phosphor. This substitution was attempted for existing commercial red emitting phosphors and proved unsuccessful.

Another set of phosphors based on these lattices were discovered and the emitted luminous efficacy was 140% greater than other reported Eu3+ phosphors. The best of these was Na2WO4MoO4Eu0.44Al1.34Sm0.011.

The integration of phosphors to the lighting application was also studied, including improvements in light extraction for existing phosphors. ACEL panels are currently applied to many applications and were briefly examined. The more recent OLED technology was investigated and comparisons can be drawn with the ACEL panels. LEDs were also a focus of the work with a new method developed for remote application of phosphors to LEDs, based on a dome shaped encapsulant, and this was adopted commercially by a high brightness LED manufacturer.

The studies on the phosphors reported herein were aimed at integrating these into commercial applications. Although this was not achieved as brightness and particles size were problematic, if it is demonstrated that further development of the synthetic methods produce phosphors with suitable attributes, this may lead to the integration in applications.