Glass-ceramic composites for high-power white-light-emitting diodes

In this paper we report on the study of sintered ceramic composites based on a low melting glass in which ZnO nanocrystals and commercial YAG:Ce phosphor are embedded. A low T is necessary to avoid high temperature sintering which can damage the optical properties of the embedded phosphor, while ZnO is introduced to increase the thermal conductivity of the system. The compositions have been optimized in terms of stability, sintering efficiency and thermal conductivity. Selected samples were optically characterized using a GaN high power multimode 450 nm Laser Diode, with a maximum output power of 1.6 W at 1.5 A.