Effects of spectral parameters on the light properties of red-green-blue white light-emitting diodes

Red-green-blue white light-emitting diodes (RGB-WLEDs) have great potential as commercial solid-state lighting devices, as well as visible light communication because of their high color-rendering index (CRI) and high response frequency. The quality of light of an RGB-WLED strongly depends on its spectral parameters. In this study, we fabricated RGB-WLEDs with red, blue, and green LEDs and measured the spectral power distribution (SPD). The experimental SPD is consistent with the calculated spectrum. We also measured the SPDs of LEDs with different peak wavelengths and extracted the spectral parameters, which were then used for modeling. We studied the effect of the wavelength and the full width at half-maximum (FWHM) on both the color rendering index and the luminous efficiency (LE) of the RGB-WLED using simulations. We find that the LE improves as the wavelength of the blue LED increases and the wavelength of the red LED decreases. When the wavelength of the green LED increases, the LE increases first, but later decreases. The CRI of the RGB-WLED increases with the wavelengths of the red, blue, and green LEDs first, but then decreases. The optimal wavelengths and FWHMs for maximum color-rendering and LE of the blue, green, and red LEDs are 466, 536, 606 nm; and 26.0, 34.0, and 19.5 nm, respectively.