Red emission enhancement in Ce3+/Mn2+ co-doping suited garnet host MgY2Al4SiO12 for tunable warm white LED

Abstract

To enhance the red emission of YAG:Ce3+ system, co-doping a second activator is one of the attractive approaches and Mn2+ is a priority candidate for red emission. However, the doping of Mn2+ in YAG will result in the multi-occupancy in different crystallographic sites, due to the mismatch of crystal radius and charge. Thus, a suited aluminate silicate garnet phosphor host MgY2Al4SiO12 with ideal crystallographic sites for the co-doping of Ce3+ and Mn2+ ions, was adopted to be the host. The local coordination of Mn2+ ions, occupying only the dodecahedral Mg2+ sites in our suited garnet phosphor, was confirmed by XRD, XPS and photoluminescence results. A color tunable emission of the Ce3+/Mn2+ co-doping phosphor MgY2Al4SiO12 can be realized by combining the yellow emission (565 nm) originating from Ce3+ with the red emission (620 nm) from Mn2+, under 460 nm excitation. The energy transfer efficiency from Ce3+ to Mn2+ via adipole-quadrupole mechanism was demonstrated to be high and reach 79.7%, which is quite higher than 45% in YAG:Ce3+,Mn2+,Si4+. More importantly, the enhancement of red emission makes the emitting colors be able to be adjusted from yellow to orange-red, which would be beneficial to the colorpoint tuning of WLED. The excellent photoluminescence characterizes with high quantum yields (up to 89.0%) indicates that the designed MgY2Al4SiO12:Ce3+,Mn2+ phosphor is a good candidate to obtain warm white LED.