Full-visible-spectrum lighting enabled by an excellent cyan-emitting garnet phosphor

Abstract

The development of phosphor materials with outstanding photoluminescence properties is critical for next-generation high-quality solid-state white lighting. As there is a blue-green cavity existing in the emission spectra of the traditional phosphor-converted white-light-emitting diodes (w-LEDs), the cyan-emitting phosphor serves as an important function in compensating the spectral gap to realize “full-visible-spectrum lighting”. Herein, we reported the discovery of an efficient cyan-emitting Ce³⁺-doped Ca₂YHf₂Al₃O₁₂ (CYHAO) garnet phosphor with good thermal stability. The as-prepared CYHAO:xCe³⁺ phosphor exhibited a broad excitation band in the range of 360 to 460 nm with a maximum at 408 nm, making this phosphor compatible with an efficient 400 nm near-ultraviolet (NUV)-emitting LED chip. Under 408 nm excitation, the optimal sample of CYHAO:0.03Ce³⁺ exhibited bright broadband cyan emission (λ_em = 493 nm; bandwidth = 100 nm) together with an extra-high internal quantum efficiency (IQE) of 89.5% and external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 69.1%. Notably, the as-prepared CYHAO:0.03Ce³⁺ phosphor showed good thermal stability (64.2% of emission intensity retained at 423 K) and excellent color stability when working in the temperature range of 303–463 K. Importantly, the constructed w-LED device exhibited bright well-distributed warm white light with a high color rendering index (CRI; Ra = 93.5 and R12 = 90.4) and low correlated color temperature (3700 K) under 60 mA driven current, indicating that the title cyan phosphor can be utilized for the compensation of the blue-green cavity to be applied in full-visible-spectrum lighting. Furthermore, these findings provide new insights into exploring high-performance cyan phosphors for NUV-pumped high-CRI warm w-LEDs.