Ce:GdYAG phosphor-in-glass: An innovative yellow-emitting color converter for solid-state laser lighting

Stable, efficient and high color rendering index all-inorganic color converters are urgently demanded for white laser diodes. Phosphor-in-glass (PiG), possessing the advantages of phosphors excellent quantum efficiency as well as favorable chemical and thermal stability of glass, has attracted widespread attention. There have been only very few reports of Y1.31Ce0.09Gd1.6Al5O12 (Ce:GdYAG) PiG for solid-state laser lighting. Herein, a series of Ce:GdYAG PiG samples are fabricated by a simple solid-state sintering method. Impressively, the supreme internal quantum efficiency of as-prepared PiG is 91%, which is very close to original phosphors (95%). Furthermore, PiG exhibits a high thermal conductivity (1.844 W m−1 K−1) and a maximum transparency (62%). Remarkably, by changing the concentration of phosphors and the thickness of PiG samples, a luminous efficacy of 163.5 lm/W, high color rendering index of 74.8 and low correlated color temperature of 4806.8 K are achieved under blue laser irradiation. These results indicate that the Ce:GdYAG PiG samples have shown tremendous application foreground as all-inorganic color converter for solid-state laser lighting.