New Phosphor and Material Structures for Displays

We propose a new concept: that of photonic crystal phosphors (PCPs) for display and phosphor related applications. It is well known that microcavities with dimensions comparable to the emitting wavelength strongly enhance light-matter interactions, resulting in a significant increase in spontaneous emission rate, which can be directly translated into enhancement in phosphor efficiency. In recent simulations we have demonstrated that when a microcavity is formed in a nano-phosphor structure, the luminescence band is modified, and can be made spectrally sharp and tunable by engineering the geometry/material properties of the cavity and the surrounding photonic crystal lattice. New phosphor material structures based on photonic crystals are proposed. Applications to thin film EL phosphors and particle phosphors are discussed. Additionally, economic methods of synthesizing and incorporating PCPs into current display applications are proposed.