Frequency-domain fluorometry in the presence of high in-phase background

We report on an approach to the measurement of fluorescence lifetimes in the frequency domain in the presence of high levels of background that is in phase with the sine-wave excitation. At high background levels, the frequency response of fluorescence waveform phase shift is shown to translate into a multicomponent function, which allows for deducing fluorescence lifetimes from the peak frequencies and magnitude of the components without explicitly knowing the level of background. Examples of the simple estimation of fluorescence lifetimes from the analysis of fluorescence frequency response for a single-exponent and two-exponent decay in inorganic phosphors within operating white light-emitting diodes are presented.