New generation of phosphors for LED lighting

Orateur : Soutenance de Thèse de Pauline BURNER

Talk in french) White solid state lighting is recognized as a major disruptive technology with an urgent need of low coast prices, associated with good color quality, confortable for eyes, by reducing the bluish harmful contribution of “cold” lighting. At Néel Institute, we develop a new type of phosphors based on yttrium aluminoborate powders. These innovating powders exhibit a large emission band on the whole visible range, arising from structural defects in the amorphous matrix. Thus, with a single phosphor, one can generate warm white lighting through the excitation of LEDs emitting in the near UV (370-390 nm). Moreover, these phosphors don’t possess lanthanides, making them less expensive. The powders synthesized by chimie douce routes, are annealed under controlled atmosphere. The yttrium alominoborate phosphors were first prepared by the polymercic precursor method. This synthesis road involved several steps and relatively high annealing temperatures (700-740°C). This thesis was focused on the sol-gel synthesis method. By this work, the duration process, the annealing temperature (450°C-650°C), and the global mass loss incoming from the organic precursors decomposition were significantly reduced. Thermal analysis (TDA-TG) coupled with mass spectrometry and 13C RNM show residual carbon groups in luminescent powders. Nevertheless, one part of the residual carbons is pyrolytic carbon (aromatic carbon), which leads to partial re-absorption of the visible emitted luminescence, and thus induces a decrease of the emission intensity. The structural characterizations of yttrium aluminoborate powders (XRD, FTIR, NMR) show that Al4B2O9 aluminoborate phase, is the first appearing crystalline phase during the increase of calcination temperature. The Pair Distribution Function (PDF) study demonstrates that amorphous aluminoborate matrix exhibit a short range ordering close to Al4B2O9 phase : a cyclic tridimensional organization of metal bridges by oxo or hydroxo ligands. On the other hand, based on 13C NMR results, yttrium seems to conserve propionate ligands in its coordination sphere until high temperature. Otherwise, the presence of radical species was evidenced in luminescent powders by electronic paramagnetic resonance. A set of measurements performed at different frequencies, in continuous and pulsed modes, allows attributing that species to carbon radicals. The presence of several luminescence species exhibiting essentially fluorescence properties (ns life time) and very weak phosphorescence emission (ms and s l ifetime) was shown by the means of photoluminescence studies steady-state and time resolved coupled to thermoluminescence analysis. The powders synthesized by sol-method exhibit a 40 % internal quantum yield. Thanks to the different characterizations, luminescent powders synthesized by the sol-gel route seem to contain two types of residual carbons : one at the origin of the luminescence properties (carbon-related radicals) while the other, pyrolytic carbon, is damaging as it absorbs partially the luminescence emission. To conclude, we suggest an extrinsic mechanism for the photoluminescence, which is based on carbon centers dispersed inside the mineral matrix, favoring mainly fluorescence in blue (430 nm) and green emissions (500 nm) associated with a weak phosphorescence emission in the same emission range.

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