Glass-ceramic phosphors for solid state lighting: A review

Solid state lighting, including phosphor converted light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and laser diodes (LDs), have released high demand to develop thermally stable phosphors. For this purpose, inorganic glass-ceramics (GCs) embedded with phosphor particles can act as competitive candidates. They are superior to traditional phosphors or resin/silica composites through successfully overcoming thermal aging and color temperature drifting problems and simultaneously maintaining high luminescent efficiencies. Inorganic GC phosphors can be classified into devitrified glass-ceramics, PiG (Phosphor-in-Glass) and sintered glass-ceramics. This review summarized the recent progress on LED/LD GC phosphors from the aspects of design principles, synthesis methods, microstructure-property relationships and their application studies. In addition, some challenging issues (e.g., crystallization behavior of luminous phase in glass, corrosion behavior of phosphor by glass matrix) are also discussed in detail. Significant issues of glass-ceramics packed LED/LD, such as luminescence efficiency, chromaticity, correlated color temperature and color gamut, are sorted out as well. Potential research directions are further suggested for not only developing new glass-ceramic phosphors but feeding upon various practical application.