High performance down-converting phosphor technologies will play a prominent role in the next generation of visible light emission, including high efficiency solid-state white lighting (SSWL). In addition, such technologies are also applicable to near infrared (NIR) and infrared (IR) light emitting technologies. Down-conversion from ultraviolet (UV) or blue light emitting semiconductor light emitting diodes (LEDs) into blue, red and green wavelengths offers a fast, efficient and cost-effective path for delivering commercially attractive white light sources. Unfortunately, existing rare-earth activated phosphors or halophosphates, which are currently the primary source for solid-state down-conversion, were originally developed for use in fluorescent lamps and cathode ray tubes (CRTs), and therefore have a number of critical shortfalls when it comes to the unique requirements of SSWL. As such, while some SSWL systems are available, poor power efficiency (<20 light lumens/watt (lm/W)), poor color rendering (Color Rendering Index (CRI)<75) and extremely high costs (>$200/kilolumen (klm)) limit this technology to niche markets such as flashlights and walkway lighting.
Furthermore, LEDs often suffer from reduced performance as a result of internal reflection of photons at the chip/coating interface. Typically, LEDs are encapsulated or coated in a polymeric material (which may comprise phosphors) to provide stability to the light-emitting chip. Currently these coatings are made by using an inorganic or organic coating that has a very different refractive index than the base material (i.e., the chip), which results in a detrimental optical effect due to the refractive index mismatch at the interface between the two materials. In addition, the temperature of the LED can reach in excess of 100° C. To allow for the expansion and contraction that can accompany this temperature rise, a compliant polymeric layer (e.g., silicone) is often placed in contact with the chip. In order to provide additional stability to the LED, this compliant layer is often further coated with a hard shell polymer.
The resulting LED structure suffers loss of light at the chip/compliant polymer interface due to the lower refractive index of the polymer coating in relation to the LED. However, if the refractive index of the compliant layer is increased, even greater loss will occur due at the high refractive index/low refractive index interface between the compliant polymer and the hard shell polymer due to internal reflection.
There are several critical factors which result in poor power efficiencies when using traditional inorganic phosphors for SSWL. These include: total internal reflection at the LED-chip and phosphor layer interface resulting in poor light extraction from the LED into the phosphor layer; poor extraction efficiency from the phosphor layer into the surroundings due to scattering of the light generated by the phosphor particles as well as parasitic absorption by the LED chip, metal contacts and housing; broad phosphor emission in the red wavelength range resulting in unused photons emitted into the near-IR; and poor down-conversion efficiency of the phosphors themselves when excited in the blue wavelength range (this is a combination of absorption and emission efficiency). While efficiencies improve with UV excitation, additional loss due to larger Stokes-shifted emission and lower efficiencies of LEDs in the UV versus the blue wavelength range makes this a less appealing solution overall.
As a result, poor efficiency drives a high effective ownership cost. The cost is also significantly impacted from the laborious manufacturing and assembly process to construct such devices, for example the heterogeneous integration of the phosphor-layer onto the LED-chip during packaging (DOE and Optoelectronics Industry Development Association “Light emitting diodes (LEDs) for general illumination,” Technology Roadmap (2002)). Historically, blue LEDs have been used in conjunction with various band edge filters and phosphors to generate white light. However, many of the current filters allow photon emission from the blue end of the spectrum, thus limiting the quality of the white LED. The performance of the devices also suffer from poor color rendering due to a limited number of available phosphor colors and color combinations that can be simultaneously excited in the blue. There is a need therefore for efficient nanocomposite filters that can be tailored to filter out specific photon emissions in the visible (especially the blue end), ultraviolet and near infrared spectra.
While some development of organic phosphors has been made for SSWL, organic materials have several insurmountable drawbacks that make them unlikely to be a viable solution for high-efficiency SSWL. These include: rapid photodegradation leading to poor lifetime, especially in the presence of blue and near-UV light; low absorption efficiency; optical scattering, poor refractive index matching at the chip-interface, narrow and non-overlapping absorption spectra for different color phosphors making it difficult or impossible to simultaneously excite multiple colors; and broad emission spectra. There exists a need therefore for polymeric layers that aid production of high quality, high intensity, white light. Surprisingly, the present invention meets this and other needs.