Development and advancement of undoped and doped zinc sulfide for phosphor application

• The review is focused on the photoluminescence and electroluminescence behaviour of ZnS phosphor and its heterostructures with different transition metal and rare-earth dopant and co-dopant for display applications. • A qualitative review with development and new challenges on ZnS with different activators and favourable properties are presented and discussed in this work. • The study will be helpful for advancement of doped ZnS nanophosphor for white light generation and new findings. The solid-state lighting (SSL) technology is energy efficient and environmentally friendly. SSL is based on the phenomenon of electroluminescence (EL), which is the emission of light by subjecting the material to an electric field or electric current. The material which emits light in this manner is known as phosphor. Luminescence properties of phosphor can be tuned by incorporating transition metal (TM) and rare earth (RE) impurity. Zinc Sulfide (ZnS) in nanoscale with certain transition metal and/or RE metals have been widely used as nanophosphor. The dopant ions alter the color emission and intensity of emission. Therefore, it has been used for multicolor emission and white light emission for display applications. Here, we discussed the photoluminescence, and electroluminescence, behavior of zinc sulfide and doped zinc sulfide for display applications. The report is focused on different dopant ions such as (Mn 2+ , Cu 2+ , Ni 2+ , Eu 2+ , Eu 3+ , Tb 2+ , Ce 3+ , Sm 2+ ), core/shell quantum dots, and heterostructures for white light emission. The mechanism, device fabrication, brightness, stability, color purity and color emission are most important for future work. Hence, a qualified review on the progress of transition metal, rare earth doped and co-doped ZnS nanophosphor and its heterostructures is presented. The results of the electroluminescence and photoluminescence study are briefly described. Research progress and recent advances with various aspects of doped ZnS nanophosphor are summarized in this review article.