Soluble silica assisted synthesis and luminescent characteristics of yellow emitting CaSrSiO4:Eu2+ phosphors for warm white light production

To meet the challenges and additional requirements towards the development of white LED׳s with utmost efficacy, a sol-gel approach is adopted wherein a water soluble silicon compound is used as a silica source. The phosphor material obtained is subjected to detailed structural, morphological and luminescent studies. The results obtained show that the XRD patterns of Eu2+ doped CaSrSiO4 phosphors are in good agreement with the CaSrSiO4 (ICSD no. 49660) whose structure is orthorhombic. The output of the luminescence studies clearly portrays a broad yellow emission between 450 and 750 nm with a peak at ~600 nm under the broad excitation range. This confirms its efficient emission towards the development of a warm white light using blue LEDs. A red shift in the peak emission wavelength was observed for the prepared samples. This longer shift in wavelength can be credited to the sol-gel method adopted and is not offered by the conventional solid state reaction method. A warm white emitting LED was fabricated by combining near ultraviolet LED (400 nm) chip with our sol-gel synthesized CaSrSiO4:Eu2+ phosphor. The CIE chromaticity coordinates (0.44 and 0.41), color correlated temperature (CCT) <4000 K, color rendering index (CRI) >80 provide their emission potentiality in the warm white light region.