Highly Efficient and Stable Near-Infrared Broadband Garnet Phosphor for Multifunctional Phosphor-Converted Light-Emitting Diodes

Broadband near-infrared (NIR) phosphor-converted light-emitting diodes (pc-LED) are ideal light sources to meet the next generation of NIR spectroscopy. However, NIR phosphors have numerous problems such as low quantum yields (QY) and low thermal stability. In this work, a series of Gd3YxInxGa5-2xO12:Cr3+ NIR broadband phosphors with high internal quantum yields (IQYs) and high thermal stability are discovered by uniquely replacing GaO6 in Gd3Ga5O12 with Y3+ and In3+ in a co-doped manner through cation modulation. Under 449 nm excitation, Gd3Y0.5In0.5Ga4O12 (GYIG):yCr(3+) depicts emission from 650 to 1050 nm with a full-width at half maximum (FWHM) of 134 nm. The emission intensity reaches its optimum value at y = 6%, while the IQY reaches an impressive 81.8% and, at 375 K, the emission intensity remains at room temperature of 94.1%. Excitingly, the obtained phosphors are made into pc-LEDs. At 0.28 W output power and 0.1 A output current, NIR pc-LED has a NIR photoelectricity conversion efficiency of 15%; more promising is that when the output power is increased to 2.247 W, the pc-LED photoelectric conversion efficiency can still maintain at 8.5%, which can be applied in different fields such as plant lighting, night vision, biological tissue penetration, and object detection.

Automated summary

Broadband near-infrared (NIR) phosphor-converted light-emitting diodes (pc-LED) with high internal quantum yields (IQYs) and high thermal stability were discovered in this study. These phosphors emit in a wide wavelength range with a high emission intensity and a small full-width at half maximum (FWHM), making them suitable for applications in plant lighting, night vision, and other fields.