Mechanisms of upconversion luminescence (UCL) of SrF2:Er phosphors corresponding to the G411/2→I415/2, H29/2→I415/2, F45/2→I415/2, F47/2→I415/2, H211/2→I4<

Microlasers based on high quality (Q) whispering-gallery mode (WGM) resonance are promising low threshold laser sources for bio-sensing and imaging applications. In this Letter, dye-doped polymer microspheres were fabricated by a controlling emulsion solvent evaporation method. WGM lasing with low threshold and high Q factors was realized in an individual microsphere under femtosecond laser pumping. The slight change of environmental relative humidity (RH) can be monitored by measuring the shift of the lasing modes at the exposure of water molecules, which demonstrates the sensitivity is as high as 6 pm/RH%. The results would offer an insight into employing microlasers as sensors.

Due to their good color rendering ability, white light-emitting diodes (WLEDs) with conventional phosphor and quantum dots (QDs) are gaining increasing attention. However, their optical and thermal performances are still limited especially for the ones with QDs-phosphor mixed nanocomposites. In this work, we propose a novel packaging scheme with horizontally layered QDs-phosphor nanocomposites to obtain an enhanced optical and thermal performance for WLEDs. Three different WLEDs, including QDs-phosphor mixed type, QDs-outside type, and QDs-inside type, were fabricated and compared. With 30 wt. % phosphor and 0.15 wt. % QDs nanocomposite, the QDs-outside type WLED shows a 21.8% increase of luminous efficiency, better color rendering ability, and a 27.0% decrease of the maximum nanocomposite temperature at 400 mA, compared with the mixed-type WLED. The reduced re-absorption between phosphor and QDs is responsible for the performance enhancement when they are separated. However, such reduced absorption can be traded off by the improper layered configuration, which is demonstrated by the worst performance of the QDs-inside type. Further, we demonstrate that the higher energy transfer efficiency between excitation light and nanocomposite in the QDs-outside type WLED is the key reason for its enhanced optical and thermal performance.

Quantum dots are finding increasing commercial success in LED applications. While they have been used for several years in remote off-chip architectures for display applications, it is shown for the first time to our knowledge that quantum dots can withstand the demands of the on-chip architecture and therefore are capable of being used as a direct phosphor replacement in both lighting and display applications. It is well known that, to achieve improved color metrics in lighting as well as increased gamut in display technologies, it is highly desirable to utilize a downconverter with a narrow emission linewidth as well as a precisely tunable peak. This paper will discuss the results of on-chip use of quantum dots in a lighting product, and explore the opportunities and practical limits for improvement of various lighting and display metrics by use of this unique downconverter technology.

We provide the first demonstration of pure red emission in the visible light region via three-photon excitation in monodisperse Na3ZrF7:Er nanoparticles (NPs) by using a laser operating in the telecommunication band. NPs of ～22 nm in diameter are synthesized at 260°C by the thermal decomposition method. The experimental results reveal that the Na3ZrF7:Er NPs exhibit pure red emission in the visible region under 1480 nm laser excitation, and the emission intensity is significantly influenced by the Er3+ ion concentration. The decay times of the S3/24→F415/2 and F9/24→F415/2 transitions of the Er3+ ions at 540 and 655 nm, respectively, are reduced by increasing the Er3+ ion concentration in the 160.2540 Fluorescent and luminescent materials 160.4760 Optical properties