The Office of Science and Basic Energy Sciences of the U.S. Department of Energy has awarded two Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II Release 1 grants related to solid-state lighting. The DOE awards the Phase II SBIR grants to Phase I Release 1 recipients who were successful with their proposed development projects. The FY16 Phase II Release 1 awards-each worth about $1 million for a 24-month research project—will examine the feasibility and technical merit of an innovative concept or technology.

The two SSL related Phase II Release 1 awards are briefly described below:

PhosphorTech Corporation of Kennesaw, Georgia USA, intends to maximize the luminous efficacy of a phosphor down-converting LED system using a combination of surface plasmon resonance, high-quantum-yield red phosphors, and enhanced light-extraction efficiency
The company expected to improve the efficacy by 42% while reducing the amount of phosphor material needed by 50%. The reduction of the phosphor material will lower costs. PhosphorTech expects these improvements will enable a wider range of new methods of packaging energy-efficient LEDs for the general-illumination industry.

Lumisyn, LLC of Rochester, New York USA, plans to synthesize compositionally novel nanocrystals that will remain highly efficient at high temperatures and optical flux. Lumisyn expects the nanocrystals to enable the production of high-efficiency, long-lifetime, on-chip, narrow-wavelength (<50 nm) phosphors for phosphor-converted (pc) LEDs. According to Lumisyn, colloidal nanocrystal down-converting phosphors are not currently employed in commercial pcLED products because they are thought to have inherently low efficiency and poor stability when placed on a chip.