Investigation of Pr-doped fluoride crystals as possible white-light emitters

White-light emission from BaY2F8, KYF4, KY3F10 and LiLuF4 samples with different Pr3+ doping levels from 0.3% to 3% is described. We report here their CIE chromatic coordinates and the intrinsic emission efficiency as the ratio of the absorbed and the emitted signal. Optical absorption spectra and luminescence spectra were acquired at room temperature after visible pumping. The calculation of Commission Internationale de l’Eclairage (CIE) coordinates shows that white emission is obtained from all the samples independent of both the doping level and incident power. The CIE coordinates closest to the white point are (0.35, 0.32) from the 0.3% Pr3+:BaY2F8 sample. We also measured the intrinsic emission efficiency of all the crystals. The best obtained is 60%.