Xiaoming Wang (left) and Yanfa Yan (right) from The University of Toledo are part of an international team that has discovered a single material that produces white light. Photo: Dan Miller, The University of Toledo.Physicists at The University of Toledo (UT) are part of an international team of scientists that has discovered a single material that can produce white light. This finding could open the door to a new frontier in lighting, which accounts for one-fifth of global energy consumption.
"Due to its high efficiency, this new material can potentially replace the current phosphors used in LED lights – eliminating the blue-tinged hue – and save energy," said Yanfa Yan, professor of physics at UT. "More research needs to be done before it can be applied to consumer products, but the ability to reduce the power that bulbs consume and improve the color quality of light that the bulbs emit is a positive step to making the future more environmentally friendly."
The novel material, which is reported in a paper in Nature, combines a lead-free double perovskite with sodium.
"Together, cesium, silver, indium and chloride emit white light, but the efficiency is very low and not usable," Yan said. "When you incorporate sodium, the efficiency increases dramatically. However, when sodium concentration reaches beyond 40%, side effects occur and the white light emission efficiency starts to drop below the peak of 86%."
Supported by the US Department of Energy's Energy Frontier Research Center in Colorado, known as CHOISE, Yan and Xiaoming Wang, a UT post-doctoral researcher, conducted the theoretical calculations that revealed why the new material produces high-efficiency white light. The material was created in experiments conducted by a team led by Jiang Tang at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China.
"It was a wonderful experience working with Dr. Wang and Dr. Yan. Their professional theoretical simulation helps to reveal the emission mechanism of this miracle material," said Tang, a professor in Huazhong University of Science and Technology's Wuhan National Laboratory. "This lead-free all-inorganic perovskite not only emits stable and efficient warm-white light that finds itself useful for solid-state lighting, but also shows as an encouraging example that lead-free perovskites could even show better performance than their lead cousins."
"Their work is truly impressive," said Sanjay Khare, professor and chair of the UT Department of Physics and Astronomy. "Emission of white light from a single material is likely to open a whole new field in opto-electronics."
This story is adapted from material from the University of Toledo, with editorial changes made by Materials Today. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of Elsevier. Link to original source.