Highly crystalline Y3Al5O12:Ce3+ phosphor-in-silica glass ceramics for high-power solid-state lighting

The pursuit of high-brightness solid-state lighting (SSL) stimulates the development of all-inorganic color converters with high robustness. It is required that the fluorescent material is able to cope with the extreme condition generated from the irradiation of high-power-density excitation light. As such, in this work, we developed a new composite color converter, i.e., Y3Al5O12:Ce3+ phosphor-in-silica glass ceramic (YAG:Ce3+ PiSGC). Remarkably, the amorphous SiO2 matrix spontaneously transforms into tetragonal SiO2 crystallites during co-sintering with crystallization fraction reaching up to >90% (almost full ceramization). The activation energy for crystallization Ec and Avrami index n of amorphous silica oxide are 298.5 kJ/mol and 1.71, indicating the diffusion-controlled glass crystallization mechanism. The fabricated prototype high-power phosphor-converted white light-emitting diode (pc-wLED) and phosphor-converted white laser diode (pc-wLD) based on YAG:Ce3+ PiSGC show satisfactory photometric/colorimetric parameters. The developed color converters have combined merits of environmental protection property, cost-effective manufacturing, good luminescent performance, and easy scalability. This study highlights a new kind of opto-functional composite material and its application as an efficient color converter in high-power solid-state lightings.