Rare-earth doped phosphors: oldies or goldies?

The scientific research on phosphors has a long history starting more than 100 years ago. But recently the appearance of new kinds of displays and lighting devices (plasma display, fluorescent lamp without mercury, etc.) induced an increase of the research of new phosphors with better luminous efficiency than those available up to now. It has been shown that the behavior of “classical” phosphors in a plasma display panel is quite different than in a cathode ray tube and that the vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) excitation process has to be studied with care in order to improve the phosphors efficiency. That is particularly true in PDPs. It is well established now that a good phosphor for electronic or ultraviolet excitation is not necessarily a good choice for excitation in VUV. This is probably due to the fact that the excitation process is very different in that case and also because the penetration depth of the VUV photons is extremely small inducing a large contribution of the surface of the phosphor. We will illustrate this with some examples. Methods to accelerate luminous intensity decrease under VUV excitation will be described. Low efficiency, fast aging process are both drawbacks that can be solved only in the framework of fundamental studies. Quantum cutting emission may be a solution for the first one but no satisfactory process was proposed for the moment to solve the second.