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LED Lighting As Cheap As CFLs Invented
mcgrew writes "New Scientist reports that a British team has overcome the obstacles to cheap LED lighting, and that LED lamps as cheap as CFLs will be on the market in five years. Quoting: 'Gallium nitride cannot be grown on silicon like other solid-state electronic components because it shrinks at twice the rate of silicon as it cools. Crystals of GaN must be grown at 1000C, so by the time a new LED made on silicon has cooled, it has already cracked, rendering the devices unusable. One solution is to grow the LEDs on sapphire, which shrinks and cools at much the same rate as GaN. But the expense is too great to be commercially competitive. Now Colin Humphreys's team at the University of Cambridge has discovered a simple solution to the shrinkage problem. They included layers of aluminium gallium nitride in their LED design... These LEDs can be grown on silicon as so many other electronics components are. ... A 15-centimetre silicon wafer costs just $15 and can accommodate 150,000 LEDs making the cost per unit tiny.'"
Now Colin Humphreys's team at the University of Cambridge has discovered a simple solution to the shrinkage problem.
Excellent news! Wait, what's this story about?
Lightbulbs getting out of a pool I guess.
All in all, a win all around, although - as someone has mentioned here - LEDs are not that 'bright' compared to traditional lighting.
I take it you've never seen a high power LED. All I can say is: don't look into high power LEDs with remaining eye.
Your friendly neighbourhood CDO neat-freak???
Fixed it for you. The letters are now in alphabetical order. LIKE THEY SHOULD BE!
I don't trust lumens either. The lumen output of CFL lighting halves every foot or so from the light source.
It's worse than that, mate. Every time you double the distance, the brightess goes down by a factor of four! So, two feet away, the bulb is a quarter as bright as it was a foot away.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!