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Science 29 January 1999:
Vol. 283. no. 5402, p. 617
DOI: 10.1126/science.283.5402.617a
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News of the Week

MATERIALS SCIENCE:
From New Phosphor, a Double Crop of Photons

Meher Antia

Replacing the mercury inside fluorescent tubes with a noble gas like xenon would eliminate their hazard and speed start-up. The stumbling block is the phosphor: the coating that absorbs ultraviolet (UV) light given off by the vapor inside the tube and reemits white light. Although current phosphors absorb UV photons from the mercury and reemit them as visible photons with about 90% efficiency, xenon generates UV photons at much higher energies than mercury, so one-to-one conversion to low-energy visible photons means that much of the energy going into the xenon is wasted as heat. On page 663, a team of chemists reports an experimental phosphor that doubles this conversion rate.

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)