Optical center VO4-activated
non-rare-earth phosphors
featuring impressive broadband emission are emerging as alternatives
to rare-earth phosphors for lightings. However, most VO4-activated phosphors merely exist in vanadates and suffer from serious
luminescence thermal quenching, which hinder the development of advanced
VO4-activated phosphors. Herein, we put forward a new strategy
of constructing optical center VO4 in non-vanadate compounds
with thermal stability to enrich the number and variety of VO4-activated phosphors and improve their thermal stability.
In this study, detailed structural analysis and theoretical calculation
show that we have successfully constructed VO4 groups with
a highly electron-localized property by substituting P5+ in the K2BaCa(PO4)2 (KBCP) host
with V5+, confirming the formation of VO4 centers.
In K2BaCa(PO4)2–x
(VO4)
x
(KBCP2–x
V
x
) compounds, the appearance
of VO4 groups significantly enhances the absorption efficiency
of near-ultraviolet light, yielding a broadband yellow emission centered
at 568 nm, with a full width at half-maximum of 213 nm. At 150 °C,
the KBCP1.8V0.2 sample shows superior thermal
stability with an emission loss of only 10%, surpassing the performances
of VO4-activated vanadate phosphors ever reported. Using
the KBCP1.8V0.2 phosphor, the resulting white-light-emitting
diodes (WLEDs) show a high color rendering index of 87.3–93.4
and a wide range of correlated color temperatures of 4357–6510
K. Our results may stimulate more research on anionic-group-activated
phosphors and accelerate the development of advanced VO4-activated phosphors.