An efficient blue-excitable broadband Y3ScAl4O12:Ce3+ garnet phosphor for WLEDs

Most commercial phosphor-converted white light-emitting diodes (pc-WLEDs) are manufactured with blue LED chips and yellow-emitting Y3Al5O12:Ce3+ (YAG:Ce3+) garnet phosphor, but the lack of blue-green light in the spectrum results in a low color rendering index (CRI). In this paper, we synthesized Y3ScAl4O12:Ce3+ (YSAG:Ce3+) by replacing Al3+ in YAG:Ce3+ with Sc3+. The introduction of Sc3+ with a larger ionic radius through a cation substitution strategy causes lattice expansion, elongation of the Y–O bond, and ultimately a decrease in Ce3+ 5d level crystal field splitting. As a consequence, the emission spectrum undergoes a blue-shift of 10 nm. Furthermore, the YSAG:Ce3+ phosphor exhibits good thermal stability, and its emission intensity at 423 K is about 58% of that at 303 K. Moreover, the analysis of Eu3+ emission spectra demonstrates that the introduction of Sc3+ resulted in a slight reduction of the dodecahedral lattice symmetry. YSAG:Ce3+ effectively compensates for the lack of the blue-green region, and WLEDs with high color rendering index (90.1), low color temperature (4566 K) and high luminous efficiency (133.59 lm W−1) were prepared using the combination of YSAG:0.08Ce3+, CaAlSiN3:Eu2+ and 450 nm blue chips. These findings indicate that YSAG:Ce3+ garnet phosphor has potential to be used in high quality WLEDs.