Versatile Applications of Rare-Earth Activated Phosphate Phosphors: A Review

Phosphates have been a classic family of materials that has amazed everyone with its high-profile advantages such as high chemical and thermal stability, facile methods for synthesis, cheap in price, high efficiency as luminescence host materials and many more. Phosphate phosphors have shown various prospective applications in the lamp industry as well as in radiation dosimetry. A vast majority of the phosphates activated by lanthanide ions were found to be potential candidates as phosphors for Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs). Many of them were able to produce color tunable emission by varying the concentration of the dopant ions in them. The fact that phosphates remain thermally stable has also proved advantageous for maintaining the photoluminescence emission at varying temperatures. Phosphates have also shown some excellent thermoluminescence properties that have been valued for their use in radiation dosimetry. This chapter gives a brief discussion on the prospective phosphate phosphors that can benefit the lamp industry. A short description about the lamp phosphors for medical applications, particularly for phototherapy has also been considered here. The last section of the chapter, discusses the various radiation dosimetric phosphors and their thermoluminescence characteristics.