Zhihui Wang, Xiaohua Wang, Yumeng Jia, Jing Wang, Zhongxiang Shi, Qingyun Yan
A narrow-band green-emitting phosphor KAl11O17(KAO): Eu2+, Mn2+, was synthesized via a high-temperature solid-state reaction to evaluate its potential for use in high-quality backlight displays. Structural refinement reveals that Eu2+ and Mn2+ ions preferentially occupy distinct crystallographic sites: Eu2+ resides at K+ sites in the conductive layer, whereas Mn2+ substitutes for tetrahedral Al3+ sites within the spinel block. This spatial separation facilitates efficient energy transfer (ET) from Eu2+ to Mn2+. Spectroscopic analysis of the optimally doped composition, KAO: 0.07Eu2+, 0.04Mn2+, indicates that the ET proceeds predominantly via a dipole - quadrupole (d-q) mechanism. The resulting phosphor exhibits bright green emission centered at 510 nm with an exceptionally narrow full width at half maximum (FWHM) of 8.13 nm, a high color purity of 98%, and an internal quantum efficiency (IQE) of 65.41%. Moreover, the material demonstrates excellent thermal stability, retaining 93.11% of its initial luminescence intensity at 423 K, corresponding to a thermal activation energy of 0.2917 eV. To demonstrate its practical utility, a white LED device was fabricated by combining the optimized green phosphor (KAO: 0.07Eu2+, 0.04Mn2+) with a blue phosphor (BaMgAl10O17 (BAM): Eu2+), a red phosphor (Ca9KMn(PO4)7: Eu2+), and a 365 nm near-ultraviolet chip. The resulting device achieves a wide color-gamut covering 107.8% of the NTSC standard. Collectively, these results demonstrate that precise control of site occupancy and energy transfer enables the design of green phosphors that simultaneously exhibit narrow-band emission, high color purity, and robust thermal stability-properties that are essential for wide color-gamut WLED backlight displays.