Carbon Dots Exhibiting Concentration-Dependent Full-Visible-Spectrum Emission for Light-Emitting Diode Applications

Carbon dots (CDs) that exhibit emission over the whole visible spectrum are desired for use in light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Here, CDs displaying tunable fluorescence over the whole visible region are synthesized. Different concentrations of CDs are uniformly dispersed in epoxy resin and coated on 405 nm LED chips to obtain monochrome blue, cyan, green, yellow, red, and deep red LEDs that yield a color gamut covering 99.4% of the National Television Standards Committee (NTSC) standard. These monochrome LEDs display similar high stability. Furthermore, warm and neutral white LEDs are produced by coating cyan- and red-emitting CD layers on 405 nm LED chips, achieving color-rendering indexes (CRIs) of 96.4 and 96.6, respectively. Two fluorescent conversion layers derived from one material at different concentrations simplify the preparation of high-CRI white LEDs. The uniform weak changes of the cyan and red photoluminescence peaks during operation ensure the high stability of these CD-based white LEDs. This research provides a new avenue to develop low-cost, easy-to-prepare CDs with tunable emission colors as alternative phosphors for LED-based high-performance displays and lighting.