| abstract |
A phosphor of oxynitride containing an alkaline earth, in particular, an inorganic phosphor that emits light with high luminance in orange or red color of wavelength longer than those of conventional rare earth-activated sialon phosphors and is chemically stable. This makes available a luminescence apparatus of lighting equipment excelling in color rendering properties and image display units excelling in durability. There is provided a base phosphor produced by solid dissolution of at least metal element M (wherein M is one or two or more elements selected from among Mn, Ce, Nd, Sm, Eu, Tb, Dy, Ho, Er, Tm and Yb) in a composition on a pseudo-ternary phase diagram whose end components consist of AO (wherein A is one or two or more elements selected from among Mg, Ca, Sr and Ba, and AO is an oxide of A), Si3N4 and SiO2, which composition satisfies all the requirements: with respect to pAO-qSi3N4-rSiO2 (wherein p+q+r=1) 0.1 ≤ p ≤ 0.95 (1) 0.05 ≤ q ≤ 0.9 (2), and 0 ≤ r ≤ 0.5 (3). |