Less is more: An oxyfluoride garnet broadband cyan-green phosphor towards highly efficient full-spectrum WLEDs

Full-spectrum lighting has become the development direction for human-centric illumination. However, the reabsorption effect caused by cyan, green and yellow multiple-phosphor packaging leads to low luminous efficiency. In this work, a broadband cyan-green phosphor is proposed to replace the cyan and yellow phosphors for highly efficient and thermally robust full-spectrum WLEDs. A new family of oxyfluoride garnet phosphors Lu2QMg2Al3O9F3: Ce3+ (Q = Ca, Sr, Ba) has been developed by incorporating F- into the classic LuAG: Ce3+ green phosphor. The excess charge was compensated by substituting trivalent Lu3+ and Al3+ with divalent alkaline earth element. The low covalency and phonon energy of fluorine-containing system endow these serial phosphors with efficient and thermally stable blue-shifted emission. The representative Lu2SrMg2Al3O9F3: Ce3+ exhibits a broadband cyan-green emission peaked at 513 nm with a 105 nm FWHM. Furthermore, outstanding quantum efficiency (88.4%) and thermal stability (94.3% @ 423 K) were achieved. This oxyfluoride phosphor was packaged with red phosphor without cyan phosphor on a blue chip. The obtained WLEDs show an excellent color rendering index (Ra = 96.8) with luminous efficiency (LE = 106 lm/W). This research might pave a promising avenue for the development of next-generation full-spectrum lighting.