Fulvio Caruso

Warm white LED light by frequency down-conversion of mixed yellow and red Lumogen

This work reports on the benefits and promising opportunities offered by white LED hybrid technology, based on a mixing perylene-based dyes in order to obtain a warm white light for frequency-down conversion. In a standard Ce:YAG-based white LED, the white light appears cold due to the weakness of red wavelength components in the emission spectrum. In order to obtain a warmer white, one possible solution is to add a red phosphor to the yellow one to move the chromatic coordinates properly, though the luminous efficiency drastically decreases due to the increased light absorption of the coating layer. It is generally believed that the low efficiency of warm white LEDs is the main issue today for LED-based lighting. Using photoluminescence of Lumogen® F Yellow 083, a perylene-based polymer dye commercialized by BASF, and adding a small quantity of another perylene-based dye, Lumogen® F Red 305 (BASF), we obtained high-efficiency warm white LEDs by yellow and red conversion from a standard 450 nm GaN/InGaN royal blue LED. Different weight proportions of dyes were dissolved in solutions with equal amounts of poly-methyl-methacrylate (PMMA) in ethyl acetate, then the LEDs were dip-coated in each solution and optically characterized. Record values of 8.03 lm of luminous flux and 116.11 lm/W of optical efficiency were achieved. Finally, the effects of both driving current, and pump wavelength on LED performances – such as chromatic coordinates, correlated color temperature, color rendering index (CRI), and optical efficiency – were investigated.

Well-aligned hydrothermally synthesized zinc oxide nanorods on p-gan without a seed layer

Zinc oxide nanorods have great potential for the realization of high efficiency heterostructure LEDs based on p-doped gallium nitride. In order to obtain a good confinement of the light, a well-aligned nanorod waveguiding structure is desirable. This paper reports on the fabrication of vertical zinc oxide nanorods using a solution-based growth process that does not require a seed layer. The nanorods obtained follow the crystalline growth direction of the GaN layer along the c-axis. Various results with different reagent concentrations are reported.