JOURNAL OF LIGHTWAVE TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 27, NO.

22, NOVEMBER 15, 2009

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Effect of Phosphor Particle Size on Luminous

Efficacy of Phosphor-Converted White LED
Nguyen The Tran, Jiun Pyng You, and Frank G. Shi, Senior Member, IEEE

AbstractIn this paper, the influence of YAG:Ce phosphor particle sizes on the lumen output and the conversion efficiency of both
in-cup phosphor and top remote phosphor LED packages are investigated with 3-D ray-tracing simulations. The lumen output and
the conversion efficiency of both types of phosphor-converted (pc)
white LED packages are dependent on the size of YAG:Ce particles. The lumen output and conversion efficiency of both types
of pc-white LED packages are minimal at the phosphor particle
size with the size parameter of around one and are highest at the
particle size in micron size. The simulation results show that both
in-cup and top remote phosphor packages have the highest lumen
output and the highest conversion efficiency at the particle size of
around 20 m.
Index TermsLED, phosphor, phosphor size, WLED.

I. INTRODUCTION
OLID-STATE lighting (SSL) for generating light that is
perceived as white color by the human eye can be done
with one of the following options: 1) discrete color-mixing:
mixing different LEDs of different colors to generate broad visible spectrum (e.g., blue (B) + green (G) + red (R) LEDs, or
B + G + R + yellow (Y) LEDs); 2) phosphor conversion LED:
combining wavelength conversion materials with a short-wavelength LED providing activation wavelength that excites the
wavelength conversion material and is partially converted to
a longer wavelength to create a perceived white spectrum as
phosphor-converted (pc) wavelength and the remainder of LEDemitted light are combined (e.g., UV LED + RGB phosphors,
or blue LED + RG phosphors, or blue LED + RGY phosphors,
or blue LED + Y phosphor, or blue LED + YR phosphor) and;
3) combination of options 1 and 2 (blue and red LEDs + green
or yellow phosphor). Generation of white LED light is usually
done by combining color LEDs and wavelength conversion materials instead of RGB LEDs because of the absence of an efficient emitter of green and yellow light and the complexity of a
RGB LED package including electrical connections and sophisticated optics for blending the discrete colors.
Although inorganic phosphor materials such as YAG phosphors usually have high quantum efficiency, the conventional

Manuscript received February 11, 2009; revised June 02, 2009. First published July 21, 2009; current version published October 02, 2009.
N. T. Tran and F. G. Shi are with the Optoelectronics Packaging and
Materials Labs, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697 USA (e-mail:
ntran3000@yahoo.com; jpyou20004@yahoo.com; fgshi@uci.edu).
J. P. You is with Nepes LED Corporation, Singapore 569060 Singapore
(e-mail: jpyou20004@yahoo.com).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JLT.2009.2028087

pc-white LED still has low phosphor conversion efficiency. The

conventional pc-white LED suffers greatly from light absorption loss inside the package. Light loss in the pc-LED device
is dominated by scattering and reflection of excitation light by
phosphor particles back into the LED chip and backward emission and scattering of pc light being directed into the LED chip.
There is a large amount of light energy reflected backward to
the package from the phosphor layer and circulated inside the
package. Backscattering and circulation of light inside the LED
package result in a high absorption loss of the emitted light.
The backward propagation light is due to scattering of light
by phosphor particles and backwardly emitted portion of phosphor-emitted yellow light. It is showed that about 40% of light
is transmitted through the phosphor layer while about 60% of
light is reflected backward [1], [2].
Backscattering and back reflection of light by phosphor particles can be minimized by optimizing phosphor particle sizes.
It has been reported that photoluminescence (PL) of YAG:Ce
phosphor particles can be improved by manipulating the size
of phosphor particles [3], [4]. In their reports, a smaller average
phosphor size has a lower PL intensity or PL quantum yield that
is defined as the ratio of the number of photons being radiated
by the photoluminescent materials to the number of photons of
light being absorbed by the luminescent materials. However, the
authors do not tell how they measured the PL intensity and only
three phosphor sizes were studied. The measurements of the
PL quantum yield are usually made on thin film samples, solutions, and powders, and thus do not represent a real pc-LED
device. Moreover, their studies focus on the internal quantum
efficiency of YAG:Ce phosphor and do not tell the effects of
phosphor sizes on the fluorescence conversion efficiency of a
real pc-LED device. Kuma [5] shows more details on the effect of phosphor sizes on the fluorescence conversion efficiency
of a CdSe composite film. Both the effects of reflective index
of semiconductor nanocrystal and the effects of self-absorption
of CdSe material are taken into consideration in Kumas study.
However, his study is for CdSe nanosize particles and limits to
a flat CdSe-composite film.
In a conventional pc-LED device, phosphor particles can
be formed a thin layer on top of a LED chip, or distributed
throughout the cup, or dispensed in a layer separated from the
LED chip by a clear encapsulation material [6][8] to increase
the luminous efficacy (lm/W). In any phosphor geometries
described above, the phosphor size is expected to influence the
luminous efficacy of the pc-LED device.
The goal of this paper is to study the effect of phosphor particle sizes on the luminous efficacy of the pc-LED device and
find the optimal phosphor size based on 3-D ray-tracing simulations (LightTools). Two different pc-LED packages with in-cup

0733-8724/$26.00 2009 IEEE

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Fig. 1. Schematic cross-sectional view of pc-white LEDs with: (a) in-cup phosphor; (b) top remote phosphor.

distributed phosphor and remote phosphor as shown in Fig. 1

are used to examine the effects of YAG:Ce particle sizes on the
luminous efficacy.
II. SIMULATION OF LIGHT OUTPUT OF PHOSPHOR-CONVERTED
WHITE LED
Effects of YAG:Ce phosphor particle sizes on the light output
of pc-white-LED are examined by using 3-D ray-tracing simulations with LightTools software. Two white LED package geometries are used in this study: 1) in-cup phosphor package in
which phosphor particles are mixed with an encapsulant and the
phosphor-encapsulant mixture is dispensed throughout the cup
as shown in Fig. 1(a); 2) remote phosphor package in which
the phosphor-encapsulant mixture forms a thin phosphor layer
being separated from the LED chip by a layer of a transparent
material as shown in Fig. 1(b).
To perform simulations, a 3-D model for each of two geometries as shown in Fig. 1 was built by using LightTools. An LED
chip with a square base of 1 mm and a height of 0.15 mm is
bonded in a cavity of reflective cup. The LED chip is encapsulated with a phosphor layer formed by an encapsulation material containing phosphor particles [as shown in Fig. 1(a)] or
a clear encapsulation material residing below an encapsulation
material containing phosphor particles [as shown in Fig. 1(b)].
A convex lens resides on the top surface of the phosphor layer
of each of these two packages. The refractive indexes of the materials for the convex lens, the transparent encapsulant, and the
encapsulant mixing with the phosphor material are assumed to
be the same and are equal to 1.46 at the excitation wavelength
of 460 nm. Phosphor particles are assumed to have a spherical
shape and have refractive index of 1.8 at all wavelengths of the
emitted light.
There are several events happened with propagating light
within an LED package including light absorption (such as by
LED chip materials, encapsulant, reflective cup, and phosphor
particles), scattering by phosphor particles, and reflection and
refraction at interfaces. The scattering intensity distribution of
the excitation light and phosphor-emitted light is an important
parameter in this simulation. It depends on the phase function,
which is a function of phosphor size, wavelength, and refractive
index of the phosphor particle and the medium [9]. In this
study, variable parameter is phosphor particle size. Phosphor
particles of different sizes scatter different amount of light
with different angular distribution, and a smaller particle size
scatters more light than a larger particle size [9]. In order to

Fig. 2. Illustration of the interaction between the excitation light and a phosphor particle: (a) scattering light distribution; (b) isotropic emission of yellow
light by a phosphor particle.

account for different scattering properties of different particle

sizes, different scattering intensity distributions of light wavelength of 430, 460, 500, 550, and 600 nm for different particle
sizes are calculated by using Mie theory. Scattering intensity
distribution of light at other wavelengths is interpolated or
extrapolated during simulation.
Absorption loss by materials other than phosphor particles
is calculated by using BeerLambert law. Light absorption by
phosphor particles is calculated based on absorption probability
of a phosphor particle per incident event. Absorption probability
of a phosphor particle is calculated by using Mie theory [9].
Phosphor concentration is varied in this study so that different correlated color temperature (CCT) of output light can be
achieved. Phosphor concentration is represented by light path
length in the software. Higher phosphor concentration means
smaller photon path length due to higher probability of hitting
phosphor particles by light.
In these simulations, light is treated as photon particle. Each
photon of light is traced until it is emitted to ambient from LED
package or its energy is vanished due to absorption by package
materials.
Simulation process starts with the emission of blue light spectrum from the LED chip in terms of power (watt). Upon interacting with phosphor particles, the excitation blue light is partially absorbed and scattered by phosphor particles. The absorption of the excitation blue light spectrum by phosphor particles
is followed by fluorescence of isotropic radiation of yellow light
spectrum by phosphor particles. Fig. 2(a) and (b) illustrate the
interaction between the excitation blue light and a phosphor particle. Fig. 2(a) is for scattering of the excitation blue light by
a phosphor particle while Fig. 2(b) is for the isotropic emission of yellow light by a phosphor particle. Unlike the blue
light, yellow light that interacts with phosphor particles does
not result in the fluorescence of light. The interaction between
yellow light and phosphor particles results in a partial absorption
and scattering of yellow light. The absorption of yellow light
by yellow-emitting phosphor particles is called self-absorption.
Kuma [5] shows that phosphor self-absorption significantly influences the outcome. The amount of yellow light absorbed by
phosphor particles at each interaction site depends on optical

TRAN et al.: EFFECT OF PHOSPHOR PARTICLE SIZE ON LUMINOUS EFFICACY

Fig. 3. Lumen output of in-cup phosphor LED packages with different particle
sizes. The unit for the diameter D shown in this figure is in m.

properties of phosphor particles that can be obtained from phosphor manufacturers or measurements.
In simulation, absorption loss of a traced light ray is updated
at every interfaces and scattering sites to calculate the remaining
energy of a traced light ray. As light is incident on an interface,
it undergoes reflection and/or refraction that are governed by
Fresnel equation of reflection. Once light propagates to ambient
air through the interface between the convex lens and ambient
air, it is collected by a receiver. The collected power of light is
scored into memory so that lumen and CCT of light output are
calculated.
III. EFFECT OF PARTICLE SIZES
The influence of phosphor particle sizes on the lumen output
of in-cup phosphor package is shown in Fig. 3(a) and (b).
Fig. 3(a) shows that as the particle size increases from nanosizes, the lumen output of pc-white-LED decreases then
increases. The lumen output decreases as the phosphor particle
size increases from the particle of nanosize to submicron
size (between 0.1 m and 0.5 m), and then increases as the
particle size continues to increase to the micron sizes. In the
micron-size region, the lumen output reaches its maximum
value at the particle size of around 20 m, and decreases at a

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larger particle size. It is interesting that the minima point occurs

of around one.
at the size parameter
This observation can be explained by using the extent of light
scattering. In particle-encapsulant composite, the extent of light
scattering is complex. The factors for determining the extent of
light scattering include the phase function that depends on the
particle size, the degree of refractive index mismatch between
the particle and the encapsulant, the concentration of suspended
particle, and the wavelength of light.
In this study, the refractive index mismatch is 0.34 at the
wavelength of 460 nm and is the same for all sizes at the same
wavelength of light because only one type of phosphor particle (YAG:Ce) is considered in this study. Generally, the effect of the refractive index mismatch on the extent of light scattering is less important for the composite with particles of a size
much smaller than the wavelength of light [10]. Visible light
propagating in a composite with nanosize particles usually does
not see particles as individual particles. It is well known that a
nanoparticle composite transmits higher amount of visible light
(that is much larger than the size of particles) than a composite
with the particles having the size parameter of around one or
a composite with the particle size of around the wavelength of
light. This means that the nanoparticle composite has lower trapping efficiency than the composite with the size parameter of
around one or with the particle sizes of around the wavelength
of light. Therefore, as the particle size increases from a nanosize to submicron size, the lumen output decreases. As the particle size continues to increase from the submicron size corresponding to the minimal lumen output, the composite becomes
more and more transparent to the visible light [9]. The increase
in light transparency reduces the trapping efficiency caused by
the scattering of particles. The lumen output thus increases as
the particle size increases from the particle size corresponding
to the minimal lumen output. However, an increase in the particle size requires a higher phosphor concentration to achieve
the light output of the same CCT or to absorb enough amount
of the excitation blue light for yellow light emission.
As particle size becomes too large, propagation direction
of light is slightly changed because a relatively large particle
slightly scatters light. This increases the trapping efficiency of
phosphor-emitted light and LED-emitted light propagating in
the horizontal direction, which is parallel to the top surface
of the phosphor layer or in a direction having a low angle
respective to the horizontal direction. In order to understand
an increase in absorption loss as phosphor particle size is
larger 20 m, a detailed analysis is performed to reveal loss
mechanism. In the detailed analysis, absorption loss by clear
encapsulant, reflective cup, and LED chip are revealed. For
performing the detailed analysis, a light collector or receiver
is set at each surface of the reflective cup to calculate amount
of light being absorbed by the reflective cup, and two light
collectors or receivers are set at each interface to calculate
the amount of light going in and out of each material layer.
From this information, absorption loss in each layer can be
determined. The analysis reveals that there is a higher amount
of light being absorbed by the tilted surface of the cup and there
is a lesser amount of light being absorbed by the bottom surface
and the LED chip in the LED package with a larger particle

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of yellow light by phosphor particles. An increase in the phosphor concentration leads to an increase in the trapping efficiency
and thus increases the absorption loss [11]. As the concentration
increases up to a certain value, the negative effect of the total
power loss on the lumen output is superior to the positive effect
of the yellow light on the lumen output. The lumen output thus
decreases as the CCT becomes relatively low.
Fig. 5 shows relative conversion efficiency that is the ratio
of conversion efficiency to maximum conversion efficiency of
the pc-white LED as a function of phosphor size and CCT. The
conversion efficiency is defined as the ratio of the emitted power
of light by the LED package to the power of light emitted by the
LED chip while the maximum conversion efficiency is defined
as
Fig. 4. Lumen output of top remote phosphor LED packages with different
particle sizes. The unit for the diameter D shown in this figure is in m.

size. This means there is more energy of light propagating in

the horizontal direction, which is parallel to the top surface
of the phosphor layer or in a direction having a low angle
respective to the horizontal direction, and there is less energy
of light propagating in backward direction as particle size
increases. Although there is a significant change in the amount
of light absorption by LED chip and the tilted and bottom
surfaces of the reflective cup, the total amount of light being
absorbed by LED chip and the surfaces of the reflective cup
is insignificantly changed as phosphor particle size increases
from 20 m. However, Fig. 3(b) shows that the lumen output
of the LED device with the phosphor particle size of 20 m is
higher than the LED device with a phosphor particle having
its size larger than 20 m. This means there is an increase in
absorption loss by phosphor layer with phosphor particle size
larger than 20 m. It is expected that self-absorption of light by
phosphor materials accounts for a high portion of addition loss
when phosphor particle size increases.
Similar to the pc-white LED package with in-cup phosphor,
the LED package with top remote phosphor has similar trend
of the lumen output (Fig. 4) but different in magnitude. Fig. 4
shows that the light output of the top remote phosphor package
is less dependent on the phosphor size than that of the in-cup
phosphor. Separation of the phosphor layer and the LED chip
in the top remote phosphor package lowers the amount of backwardly emitted yellow light and backscattered light being directed into the LED chip. As a result, the conversion efficiency
of the top remote phosphor package is higher than that of the
in-cup phosphor package and changes at a slower rate as the
phosphor particle size is varied.
For both types of the LED package with the micron particle
sizes, the lumen output increases and then decreases as the CCT
increases. This is because the lumen output is a function of the
total power output and the power distribution of a white light
spectrum. In the dichromatic white light spectrum with a lower
CCT, the power ratio of yellow to blue light is higher. Since
yellow light has a higher luminous efficacy than blue light, the
luminous efficacy increases as the CCT decreases. In order to
lower the CCT, the concentration of phosphor needs to be increased to increase the absorption of blue light and the emission

where
is the power of light (blue) emitted by the LED chip,
is the power of blue light in the dichromatic white light
is the conversion efficiency
output of a pc-white LED, and
of phosphor material. The power of blue light in the dichromatic
white light output can be calculated by dividing the dichromatic
white spectrum into two spectra: one spectrum for blue light and
one spectrum for yellow light as shown in Fig. 6.
The LED package with the particle sizes corresponding to
higher lumen output has higher relative conversion efficiencies.
In contrast to the lumen output that increases then decreases
with the CCT varying in the range between 4000 K and 8000 K
as seen in Figs. 3(b) and 4, the relative conversion efficiency as
shown in Fig. 5 has the lowest value at the CCT of 4000 K and
increases with an increase in the CCT for all particle sizes. The
package with a lower CCT has a higher trapping efficiency due
to higher concentration of phosphor particles [11]. The higher
trapping efficiency results in a higher power loss or a lower
power output, and thus, it lowers the relative conversion efficiency. At the light output with the CCT of 6500 K, the top remote phosphor package with the optimal phosphor size has relatively high conversion efficiency, around 89%. Therefore, there
is no need for an improvement of the conversion efficiency of
phosphor layer if the cost is high. However, at a relatively low
CCT such as 40005500 K, the conversion efficiency of both
types of the pc-white LED packages is low. Therefore, a high
efficient package such as PSE package [2] or other type of remote phosphor packages is needed.
Key experiments were performed to verify the simulation results. Commercial InGaN LED chips with its size of mm
mm
mm and its emission light peaked at 460 nm
were used in the experiments. The LED packages used in these
experiments had approximately same size, shape, and material
properties as those of the simulated package shown in Fig. 1(a).
Commercial YAG:Ce phosphors with two mean sizes of 68 m
and 15 m, according to the phosphor manufacturer, were used.
The experimental results show that the lumen output with CCT
of around 5200 K from the package with a mean phosphor size
of 15 m is about 3.2% higher than that from the package with
mean phosphor size of 68 m. This is consistent with simulation results, which is 1.9% (for the particle size of 15 m versus
8 m) and 7.8% (for the particle size of 15 m versus 6 m).

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Fig. 6. Spectrum of dichromatic white LED.

a lowest value at the particle size with the size parameter of

around one and they have a highest value at the particle size in
micron size. Simulations show that both types of packages have
optimal phosphor size of around 20 m. Under same conditions
such as CCT and phosphor size, lumen output of the remote
phosphor package is less sensitive to phosphor size and higher
than that of the in-cup phosphor package.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors thank Dr. Y. He for technical support in fabricating the devices.
REFERENCES

Fig. 5. Relative conversion efficiency of the pc-white LED as a function of

CCT and the particle size: (a) & (b) for in-cup phosphor; (c) remote phosphor.
The unit for the diameter D shown in this figure is in m.

IV. CONCLUSION
The lumen output and the conversion efficiency of a pc-white
LED device with in-cup phosphor and remote phosphor geometries are dependent on the size of YAG:Ce particles. They have

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Nguyen The Tran received the Ph.D. degree in chemical and biochemical engineering from University of California (UCI), Irvine, in 2007.
Before coming to UCI, he worked on renewable energy, specifically self-sustained Hynol-Gaso-Fischer-Tropsch at Ce-cert. Currently, he is with NEPES
LED and works on developing LED lighting systems.

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Jiun Pyng You received the Ph.D. degree from the University of California,
Irvine, in 2008.
He is working for Nepes LED Corp. to develop new packaging materials for
high-power LED. Before joining LED industry, he worked for IC manufacturing
company, TSMC in Taiwan.

Frank G. Shi (M01SM02) is a Professor at the University of California, Irvine, where he directs the Optoelectronics Packaging and Materials
Laboratory.