YAG: Ce3+ phosphor/silicone composites are widely used in solid-state lighting as a light converter to achieve white lighting. However, because of high thermal resistance and low thermal stability, the luminous performance of YAG: Ce3+ phosphor/silicone composite deteriorates rapidly when excited by high-power-density blue-laser. To explore the potential of blue laser-excited YAG: Ce3+ phosphor/silicone composites, the luminous performances under different blue laser power conditions were characterized by both the reflective and transmissive excitations using a self-built three-integrating-sphere system. Furthermore, the Monte-Carlo Ray-tracing simulation was used to illustrate the light-transmission and energy conversion mechanism in the phosphor/silicone composites. The results showed that: (1) The YAG: Ce3+ phosphor/silicone composite could be excited by the 0.292W laser light with the peak wavelength of 445nm, excessive laser power will cause phosphor thermal quenching and silicone carbonization. (2) The luminous flux of the composite under both the reflective and transmissive excitations gradually increased with the increase of phosphor concentration; correspondingly, the color coordinate moved to the yellow region, and the Correlated Color Temperature (CCT) gradually decreased. (3) The simulation results indicated that under the same phosphor concentration, the luminous flux obtained by reflection excitation was largely higher than that by the transmission excitation, as the light re-conversion and strong back-scattering were occurred in the reflective and transmissive laser excitation respectively.

In a light-emitting diode (LED) package, silicone encapsulant serves as a chip protector and enables the light to transmit, since it exhibits the advantages of high light transmittance, high refractive index, and high thermal stability. However, its reliability is still challenged under harsh operation conditions. In this study, the optical and mechanical properties of silicone encapsulant, including appearance, light transmittance, Young’s modulus, and tensile strength, were experimentally monitored during the sulfur-rich ageing process. Meanwhile, the Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and molecular dynamics (MD) simulation were used to reveal its degradation mechanism. The results show that 1) in the sulfur (S₈)-rich ageing process, the severe vulcanization reaction occurred in silicone encapsulant assisted only by high temperature and high moisture, with the existence of H₂S as the reaction product of S₈ and H₂O vapor. 2) Vulcanization characterized by the formation of the sulfhydryl (-SH) group lowered both optical and mechanical properties of silicone encapsulant. 3) The hydrolysis reaction featured by the formation of the hydroxyl (-OH) group decreased the mechanical performances of silicone encapsulant but brought slight harm to its optical performances.

The emission spectra of high color rendering phosphors, mixed with the yttrium aluminium garnet, silicon based oxynitride and nitride based phosphors, were predicted by the Lambert-Beer theory and back propagation neural network (BP NN). Firstly, the modified Lambert-Beer model was used to calculate the proportional coefficient of the emission spectra of the mixed phosphors in ratios. Next, the BP NN was implemented to train and predict the proportional coefficients. Finally, the prediction of the emission spectra of the mixed phosphors was estimated and verified by the experimental measurements. The results show that the prediction error fraction of the proportional coefficients can be controlled within 5%; the predicted emission spectra by BP NN keep high agreement with the experimental measurements with lower RMSE and Δxy as 0.019 and 0.0016, respectively.

With their advantages of high efficiency, long lifetime, compact size and being free of mercury, ultraviolet light-emitting diodes (UV LEDs) are widely applied in disinfection and purification, photolithography, curing and biomedical devices. However, it is challenging to assess the reliability of UV LEDs based on the traditional life test or even the accelerated life test. In this paper, radiation power degradation modeling is proposed to estimate the lifetime of UV LEDs under both constant stress and step stress degradation tests. Stochastic data-driven predictions with both Gamma process and Wiener process methods are implemented, and the degradation mechanisms occurring under different aging conditions are also analyzed. The results show that, compared to least squares regression in the IESNA TM-21 industry standard recommended by the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IESNA), the proposed stochastic data-driven methods can predict the lifetime with high accuracy and narrow confidence intervals, which confirms that they provide more reliable information than the IESNA TM-21 standard with greater robustness.