YAG:Ce/(Gd,Y)AG:Ce dual-layered composite structure ceramic phosphors designed for bright white light-emitting diodes with various CCT

Y3Al5O12:Ce and (Gd,Y)(3)Al5O12:Ce ceramic phosphors were fabricated by solid-state reaction method under vacuum sintering. Pure garnet phase of these (Gd,Y)AG:Ce ceramics was confirmed by X-ray diffraction (XRD) with Gd content of 0, 25%, 50% and 75%, respectively. The electroluminescent properties of the unpacked and packed LED devices based on YAG:Ce and (Gd,Y)AG:Ce ceramics were measured. The highest luminous efficacy of 130.5 lm/W was achieved by YAG:Ce ceramic phosphor with thickness of 0.4 mm. However, the correlated color temperature (CCT) of the LED device based on it was high due to a lack of red component in the emission light. Therefore, Y3Al5O12:Ce/(Gdx,Y1-x)(3)Al5O12:Ce dual-layered composite structure ceramics phosphor were designed and fabricated according to the color space chromaticity diagram. In one demonstration, various CCT could be tuned from 3100 K to 3600 K by these dual-layered structure, while the luminous efficacy can reach 109.9 lm/W. The high luminous efficacy and safe warm white light emitted by these dual-layered phosphors made them promising candidate for white LED devices. (C) 2015 Optical Society of America