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A guide to comprehensive phosphor discovery for solid-state lighting

Nature Reviews Materials volume 8, pages 759–775 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Inorganic phosphors have been crucial in enabling energy-efficient, phosphor-converted light-emitting diode (LED) lighting and display technologies. The push to increase the luminous efficacy and improve the colour quality of these lights has led to a surge in reports of different combinations of phosphor host structures and activators, with many claiming that the new materials have transformative properties. This Perspective article outlines the optical property requirements phosphors must meet to impact the field. Additionally, the tools that have been developed to accelerate the discovery of exceptional phosphors that meet these requirements are summarized, including crystal–chemical design rules, proxies, data-driven approaches, first-principles calculations and combinatorial methods. We also highlight open challenges in the field of phosphor discovery. Finally, we discuss the reality that these methods are unlikely to identify a perfect phosphor that satisfies all the requirements. Instead, we propose a workflow for phosphor discovery that prioritizes the properties necessary to produce next-generation phosphor materials.

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Fig. 1: The composition of phosphors and the six key properties a phosphor must possess for commercialization.
Fig. 2: Metaheuristics-assisted combinatorial screening to target phosphors with a specific emission colour.
Fig. 3: A single-particle diagnosis approach for phosphor discovery.
Fig. 4: Machine learning the Debye temperature to identify highly efficient phosphors.
Fig. 5: The full width at half maximum of phosphors is influenced by aliovalent substitution and local structure.
Fig. 6: Density functional theory calculations and machine learning can be used to understand and predict phosphor thermal quenching.
Fig. 7: A phosphor discovery pipeline.

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Acknowledgements

S.H., M.S. and J.B. thank the National Science Foundation (CER-1911311 and DMR-1847701) for supporting this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA

    Shruti Hariyani, Małgorzata Sójka & Jakoah Brgoch

  2. Texas Center for Superconductivity, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA

    Shruti Hariyani, Małgorzata Sójka & Jakoah Brgoch

  3. GE Global Research Center, Niskayuna, NY, USA

    Anant Setlur

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S.H. and M.S. researched data for the article. S.H., A.S. and J.B. contributed substantially to discussion of the content. S.H., M.S. and J.B. wrote the article. All authors reviewed and/or edited the manuscript before submission.

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Hariyani, S., Sójka, M., Setlur, A. et al. A guide to comprehensive phosphor discovery for solid-state lighting. Nat Rev Mater 8, 759–775 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41578-023-00605-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41578-023-00605-6

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