Novel Phosphor Powder Boosts Picture Quality of LED Electronics

GE announced today a research breakthrough that will vastly improve the color and crispness of images displayed on LED devices – everything from cell phones and tablets to televisions.

Scientists at GE Lighting and GE Global Research developed a phosphor powder that, when packaged inside an LED, push the picture quality of LED electronics to new heights.

GE’s patented solution involves adding potassium fluorosilicate (PFS) doped with manganese as a red line emitter to an LED. The use of the PFS phosphor in LED systems generates a reddish color that’s sharper, cleaner, and truer than the state-of-the-art nitride phosphor – resulting in less color bleed and a richer picture.

Anant Setlur, a materials scientist and leader on the phosphors effort at GE Global Research, said, “Backlit displays consist of an array of LEDs fed into a waveguide to filter out red, green, and blue. In most of the devices you see on the market today, the red component in the LED is low quality, causing greens to look yellowish; this negatively impacts the overall picture quality. What we’ve achieved here allows for more natural color in consumer electronics. The difference in picture quality is stunning.”

GE Ventures has licensed the technology patents to Sharp Corporation and Nichia Corporation, both of which are manufacturing and packaging LEDs containing PFS phosphor material for use as LED backlights in a wide range of LCD display products. In fact, several display companies have recently launched tablets and smartphones containing LED devices supplied by these licensees.

Mike Petracci, General Manager of Licensing, GE Ventures, said, “Sharp and Nichia are world-class leaders in the design and sale of LEDs and we are pleased to bring this breakthrough to market.”