Toward commercial realization of quantum dot based white light-emitting diodes for general illumination

Abstract

We demonstrate the first commercial production–ready white light-emitting diodes (LEDs) for the general illumination market with red colloidal quantum dots (QDs) applied in an on–chip configuration. We show the red QDs with tunable peak emission and narrow full width at half-maximum in combination with a conventional phosphor material can lead to LED conversion efficiency improvements of 5% to 15% over commercial phosphor based LEDs at correlated color temperatures (CCTs) ranging from 5000 to 2700 K. Furthermore, the challenges associated with reliability under high temperature, high blue flux intensity, and high humidity operation have been overcome to meet consumer market requirements. Finally, a demonstrator lamp at 3000 K color temperature and 90 color rendering index (CRI) with QD based LEDs show a larger efficiency gain up to 17%, attributed to the reduced blue LED droop from the lower drive current and the lower heat sink temperature when compared to a standard phosphor based LED lamp output.