Electrophoretic deposition (EPD) is a technique to deposit charged particles from a stable suspension under the force of an applied electric field. Although nanoparticles of a variety of materials have been coated by EPD, there have been few direct comparisons of EPD of nano-and micron-sized particles of the same material. The objective of this study is to compare EPD of nano-, nano core/SiO 2 shell and micron-sized (Ba 0.97 Eu 0.03 ) 2 SiO 4 phosphor particles for application in a near-UV LED-based light source. EPD from an amyl alcohol bath was able to produce uniform films for all particle sizes, whereas uniform films were produced only of micron-sized particles in an isopropyl alcohol bath. Electrophoretic deposition (EPD) is a useful method to fabricate particulate films.1 The process is simple, scalable and often costeffective. First, the particles are charged in a suspension, subsequently they are transported to an electrode under an electric field, and finally the particles adhere to the substrate. Each step has been systematically investigated in previous work in a bath of isopropyl alcohol (IPA) with nitrate salts, by studying the effects of the suspension medium chemistry on the zeta potential of the particles and the formation of the adhesive agents.
2-4For producing white solid-state lighting devices, EPD has been used to deposit micron-sized phosphors placed above an LED. Y 3 Al 5 O 12 :Ce 3+ phosphor was deposited onto a flexible indium tin oxide (ITO)-coated polymer substrate on top of blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs).5 In other work, both layered and blended phosphor films using Eu-activated Ca-α-SiAlON, β-SiAlON and CaAlSiN 3 (yellow-, green-and red-emitting, respectively) were deposited on an ITO-coated substrate that was placed on top of a blue-emitting LED. 6 Recently, EPD was used to deposit both layered and blended phosphor films that generated white light using Eu 2+ -activated Sr 2-x Ca x Si 5 N 8 , Ba 2 SiO 4 , LiCaPO 4 , (Sr 0.75 Ba 0.25 ) 2 SiO 4 and (Sr 0.5 Ba 0.5 ) 3 SiO 5 (red-, green-, blue-, yellow-and orange-emitting, respectively) with near-UV LEDs. 7,8 The phosphor films must be ∼10 to 40 μm thick for full conversion of the UV emission from the LED. Also the film thickness must be very uniform. It was determined that the deposited film quality was poor when a higher applied voltage was used. 9 This has led to the development of the EPD processes using lower voltages (∼80 V) and longer deposition times up to 30 min 7,8 than previous EPD processes. [1][2][3][4] Typically, micron-sized phosphors are being used in solid-state lighting. However, the micron-sized phosphors have higher optical scattering losses due to an increased optical path length and increased number of reflections or transmissions at interfaces. 10 The nano-phosphors (<300 nm) with comparable quantum efficiency to typical micron-sized phosphors may be a mean to reduce the losses and improve efficiency of the white UV-based LEDs.11 But it is well known that the emission intensity of the phosphor decreases as the...