Excellent yellow emission of Si3N4:Eu nanorods derived from waster silicon with better thermal stability for white LEDs

The core issue of light emitting diodes (LEDs) for actual application is the thermal stability of phosphors. Silicon nitride (Si 3 N 4 ) is generally recognized as especially important structural material due to its excellent mechanical properties at extreme high temperature. In this work, Si 3 N 4 : Eu was demonstrated to be an excellent luminescence functional material for LEDs. The discarded corner-waster silicon raw material was utilized to act as the precursor. The Si 3 N 4 :Eu phosphor was synthesized by a facile nitriding process at elevated temperature. The pure α-Si 3 N 4 :Eu nanorods were successfully obtained by adjusting the doping concentration of Eu. It is coexistence with mixed-valence (divalent and trivalent) for Eu in α-Si 3 N 4 according to X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The synthesized α-Si 3 N 4 :Eu nanorods showed bright yellow under the excitation of 365 nm (UV) and white luminescence by 460 nm chip (Blue). The Si 3 N 4 :Eu nanorods possess excellent thermal stability, maintains nearly 70% of the origin intensity even at temperatures over 300 °C. The Si 3 N 4 :Eu nanorods demonstrated comparable performance to commercial YAG:Ce 3+ (YAG). Moreover, the long-term thermal stability of Si 3 N 4 :Eu nanorods is superior to commercial YAG, revealing the enhanced service performance. This work not only presents a facile Si 3 N 4 :Eu nanorods green synthesis route from waste utilization, but also offers an enhanced service performance for the high temperature LEDs application.