The cyan-emitting BaSi₂O₂N₂:Eu²⁺ phosphor is a promising narrow-band and high-efficiency luminescent material used in wide-color-gamut white light-emitting diodes (wLEDs). However, its serious degradation under thermal attacks hinders its practical applications and needs to be improved. Herein, we proposed to deposit a nano-sized Al₂O₃ film around each BaSi₂O₂N₂:Eu²⁺ particle through atomic layer deposition (ALD) in a fluidized bed reactor to improve its thermal stability. Thermal gravimetric analysis results showed that the Al₂O₃ layer with a thickness of only 11 nm had an obvious anti-oxidization effect, by which the oxidation temperature in air of the Al₂O₃ coated phosphor was largely increased from ∼550 to ∼750 °C. Moreover, the Al₂O₃ coated phosphor remained 93% of its luminescence intensity in comparison to 73% of the uncoated one when degraded under water-steam at 200 °C for 24 h. The oxidization of both the BaSi₂O₂N₂ host matrix and the doped Eu²⁺ ions was reduced by the Al₂O₃ layer. Meanwhile, the wLEDs fabricated with the Al₂O₃ coated phosphor showed a luminous flux of 3 times higher than that of the uncoated one when aged under 100 mA for 300 h. The greatly improved thermal degradation property of BaSi₂O₂N₂:Eu²⁺ phosphor and the reliability of the wLEDs indicate that the ALD approach could be a feasible route to produce uniform and nano layers on phosphors and enhance their stability.

The red-emitting Sr ₂ Si ₅ N ₈ :Eu ²⁺ phosphor with a superior quantum efficiency and suitable emission spectrum has been widely used as a promising down-conversion material in white light-emitting diodes. However, its thermal degradation under high temperature handicaps its large scale application, and therefore must be reduced. Here, we proposed to increase the thermal stability of Sr ₂ Si ₅ N ₈ :Eu ²⁺ by coating a nanometer-order Al ₂ O ₃ film on each phosphor particle using an atomic layer deposition approach in a fluidized bed reactor. The deposited Al ₂ O ₃ layer was quite uniform and conformal when using O ₃ as the oxidizer, and its thickness could be controlled by the dosage type, deposition temperature and cycle numbers, which largely affects the photoluminescence properties and thermal degradation of the title phosphor. Thermal gravimetric analysis results showed that the oxidation temperature of the coated phosphor increased from 700 to 850 °C, suggesting that the coating layer has the function of anti-oxidation. Meanwhile, the coated phosphor particle surface became hydrophobic. Consequently, the thermal degradation of phosphor powders in air at 200 °C was greatly reduced and the stability of the fabricated LEDs with coated powders was also improved. Prospectively, the proposed approach provides a new strategy to improve the thermal stability of other phosphors.

A new sialon Eu_3.60LiSi_13.78Al_6.03O_6.82N_22.59 has been discovered via the single-particle diagnosis approach. Its crystal structure (space group P3m1) was solved and refined from single-crystal X-ray diffraction data. It has the interesting feature of two types of disorder at the Eu2 site: positional disorder (Eu2a/Eu2b) and substitutional disorder with (Si/Al)₂(O/N). The structure is generalized to the formula A_4-mB_nC_19+2mX_29+m (A = Sr, La, Eu, Ce; B = Li; C = Si, Al; X = O, N; 0 ≤ m ≤ 1; 0 ≤ n ≤ 1), of which Sr_3.61LiSi_14.27Al_5.61O_6.19N_23.25 (Sr-sialon, m = 0.41, n = 1) and La_2.85Sr_0.76LiSi_14.86Al_4.93O_2.89N_26.51 (LaSr-sialon, m = 0.40, n = 1) are two examples that have been obtained as a single-phase powder. Sr-sialon:Eu and LaSr-sialon:Eu both show blue to yellow emission, depending on the Eu concentration, whereas Sr-sialon:1% Ce shows a deep-blue emission band centered at 422 nm with a full width at half-maximum of 80 nm and an internal quantum efficiency of 80% (λ_ex = 355 nm). The latter phosphor has very good thermal stability of both emission intensity and color. A white light-emitting diode (LED) containing the newly discovered Sr-sialon:5% Ce as the blue phosphor component shows excellent color-rendering indices (R_a = 96 and R₁₂ = 97) with a correlated color temperature of 4255 K. This indicates that Sr-sialon:Ce is a highly promising deep-blue phosphor for illumination grade white LEDs.