Luminescence declining behaviors in YAG:Ce transparent ceramics for high power laser lighting

High lumen-density laser lighting has become an advanced lighting technology. However, as an important component, transparent light-conversion materials exhibit low efficiency and luminescence declining behaviors, especially under high power density lasers, seriously restricting their potential applications. Herein, high quality YAG:Ce transparent ceramics (TCs) with different Ce concentrations and sizes were designed and fabricated for comparison with YAG:Ce single crystals to reveal the nature behind the above phenomena under the assistance of different encapsulated models of LED/LD devices. The highest luminous efficiency for the TCs of over 248 lm W−1 was achieved in the LED device, while only 170 lm W−1 could be reached for the LD devices. The strong thermal quenching and concentration quenching worked synergistically to result in the luminescence declining behavior in the 0.5 at% YAG:Ce ceramics, which have 80% and 20% responsibility after smart experimental comparison, respectively. Besides, the potential factors for the low efficiency in TC-based LD lighting were also revealed. Therefore, this work not only shows the optical performance of TCs in LED and LD applications, but also presents how the deep influence factors and excitation models lead to differences in their performance. It significantly reinforces the understanding of fundamental problems for TC-based high power laser lighting. These results are crucial for advancing TC-supported technologies in illumination, projection and scintillation.