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The Future Of Light - Organic LEDs
pmbarth writes "The filament based or fluorescent light technology has not changed for a long time. However, there appear to be new lighting technologies on the horizon. Personally, how cool would it be to just 'have light', and not have a bright light-source to contend with? Bye-bye incandescents!"
I could imagine one day having walls papered with this stuff and being able to adjust the brightness of a room and having it be uniform across the entire room.
Not only energy-efficient, but tasty and better for you, too! :-)
Also of interest was the article linked to from the posted one, about using organic LEDs for thin, bright computer displays.
While it's true that a lot of people are ignoring the compact fluorescent bulbs right now despite their obvious advantages, I believe that the case will not be the same for organic LEDs. Because these lights will use even less power and last even longer than compact fluorescents, I think the advantages will be too extreme for consumers to ignore.
Even if they don't catch on in (or aren't well developed for) home lighting they will still be very functional in other places. Laptop screens for example will require less power, have sharper images and be viewed more evenly from different angles.
Also, I think that the comparison to wallpaper was meant to just be an example of how big the sheets could be, not to suggest that houses will be actually wallpapered with the sheets. I would think that if large sheets were made for home use they would probably be meant to cover the ceiling and I definitely think that this would be a lighting choice in the office.
I think though, that the main home use would be for mounting in standard light sockets because it would be more familiar to people, less expensive and also because light from above is a lot different (some might even say, uncomfortable or impersonable) from light that comes from lamps.
Side note about compact fluorescents: Two things that compact fluorescents have working against them besides peoples' resistance to change is that it's hard to find bulbs with brightness equivalents higher than 75W and hard to find 3-way fluorescent bulbs (I'm not even sure 3-ways exist!).
There are quite a few companies out there (http://www.ledtronics.com) right now who are manufacturing LED lamps (for you non techies that means "light bulb" not the fixture itself which is a "lighting instrument") which are meant to be used in standard US medium screw base sockets. I just discovered this the other day and I think that it is way cool! You can also get flashight bulbs to replace the inkies that you currently have in your flashlight (alas, the lowest voltage I've found so far is 6V which is twice the voltage of a 2 AA Maglite).
Ever since I saw those little blue night lights, I've been waiting for this technology to come to general home lighting. If this organic sheet material ever hits the market, I'll be one of the first to put up a ceiling border in every room. I especially like the idea of "papering" the underside of my kitchen cabinets with this stuff for the best in counter lighting. I only hope that the rest of the world will see what a great thing this is and that builders and remodelers will make it a construction industry standard.
Of course, I would expect corporations to embrace this as a mode of lighting for their offices since they must pay some steep electrical bills in lighting alone. Anything to lower overhead costs.
It would of course be especially great if they can produce this material to create full spectrum light. Just my hopes for part of a more environmentally friendly future.
:::Horrendous Experiences Make Amusing Anecdotes:::
This reminds of a weird tech paper from Digital Equipment Labs I once read. Some engineers were screwing around on break and one of them hooked their kim-chee to a power source and some test equipment. They discovered two things: one the kim-chee acted like a rectifier and that it also acted like a LED. They then did some preliminary research into the field of vegetable electronics. I'm not sure how serious this really was, but it was a fun read. This used to be on the web, but I haven't seen it in ages. Has anyone else read this?