Multicolor Phosphate Glasses for Potential White LED Lighting and X-Ray Detections

Though widely applied in light-emitting diode (LED) lighting and X-ray detection, respectively, rare-earth ions doped phosphor and scintillating single crystals still face many challenges in practicalities, like aging of package material and difficulty to construct tiny array structure. Using phosphate glass as the host is quite beneficial for solving these problems while enabling distinguished luminescence. Therefore, Eu3+ and Tb3+ doped phosphate glasses which, respectively, show strong red/green emissions are researched. Superior thermal stabilities (78.69% and 89.35% emission intensities remain at 150 degrees C) and high internal quantum efficiencies (87.3% and 68.6%) are found to guarantee the excellent photoluminescence performances. The brilliant X-ray excited luminescence properties are demonstrated by general 19.49% and 34.74% integrated emission intensities of that of commercial Bi4Ge3O12 single crystal scintillator with the change of X-ray power. Meanwhile, Tb3+ doped scintillating fiber is drawn. Finally, excited by 380 nm LED, color manipulation and white light generation are achieved in LEDs with a structure of stacked emitting layers (mainly Eu3+ and Tb3+ doped phosphate glasses). Many of the as-constructed white LED's performance parameters are much better than the commercial white LED. These results show that Eu3+ and Tb3+ doped phosphate glasses possess promising potential in LED lighting and X-ray detections.

Automated summary

Rare-earth ions doped phosphate glasses show promising potential in LED lighting and X-ray detection due to their excellent photoluminescence performances and thermal stabilities.