A novel yellow-emitting SrAlSi4N7:Ce3+ phosphor for solid state lighting: Synthesis, electronic structure and photoluminescence properties

Abstract

Ce3+-doped and Ce3+/Li+-codoped SrAlSi4N7 phosphors were synthesized by gas pressure sintering of powder mixtures of Sr3N2, AlN, α-Si3N4, CeN and Li3N. The phase purity, electronic crystal structure, photoluminescence properties of SrAlSi4N7:Ce3+(Ce3+/Li+) were investigated in this work. The band structure calculated by the DMol3 code shows that SrAlSi4N7 has a direct band gap of 3.87eV. The single crystal analysis of Ce3+-doped SrAlSi4N7 indicates a disordered Si/Al distribution and nitrogen vacnacy defects. SrAlSi4N7 was identified as a major phase of the fired powders, and Sr5Al5Si21N35O2 and AlN as minor phases. Both Ce3+ and Ce3+/Li+ doped SrAlSi4N7 phosphors can be efficiently excited by near-UV or blue light and show a broadband yellow emission peaking around 565nm. A highest external quantum efficiency of 38.3% under the 450nm excitation was observed for the Ce3+/Li+-doped SrAlSi4N7 (5mol%). A white light LED lamp with color temperature of 6300K and color rendering index of Ra=78 was achieved by combining Sr0.97Al1.03Si3.997N\\94\\maccounttest14=t0005_18193 7:Ce3+0.03 with a commercial blue InGaN chip. It indicates that SrAlSi4N7:Ce3+ is a promising yellow emitting down-conversion phosphor for white LEDs.