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OLED Breakthrough Yields 75% More Efficient Lights
Mike writes "Researchers at Korea's Advanced Institute of Science and Technology recently announced a breakthrough in OLED technology that reduces the ultra-thin lights' energy consumption by 75%. The discovery hinges upon a new method of creating 'surface plasmon enhanced' organic light emitting diodes that boast 1.75 times increased emission rates and double the light intensity." OLEDnet notes: "The finding was published in the April issue of Applied Physics Letters and the June 25 issue of Optics Express. It will be also featured as the research highlight of the August issue of Nature Photonics and Virtual Journal of Ultrafast Science."
I would think the usefulness of these OLEDs would be more for brighter (daylight readable) electronic displays than for hugging trees and crunching granola. Eco friendliness is not the only reason to conserve power; consider for example extended battery life as a more tangible benefit.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Yup, because sucking out some air requires more energy than leaving a light on for thousands of hours...
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
The bad always comes with the good. I mean, would you really throw away internet message boards just because they enable hipster whining?
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
It would certainly be modestly more expensive than an otherwise equivalent process that doesn't require a high vacuum step; but vacuum deposition isn't exactly exotic. All sorts of surface metalizing processes use it.
Aside from that, there are applications(actually quite a lot of them) where being able to consume less energy at the point of use, even if you consume more energy overall, is quite valuable. For any "off grid" application(whether permanent, like your survivalist bunker in Montana, or temporary, like your macbook during a trip to starbucks) what really matters is how much energy your device is using now not how much energy it took to create. For that matter, any rechargeable battery is highly wasteful, since a fair bit of the charge energy will just be lost as heat; but having the energy where you need it is obviously valuable. This is the same reason why solar panels became valuable for specific off grid applications well before they reached the break-even point for lifetime energy cost vs. energy production.
Give me a wall screen TV or a whole ceiling panal light and I'll be impressed.
It has no real purpose unless somebody sells something from it...
Sorry, I already have a company called Mobil-Dick and it usually has nothing to do with animals.
Sounds like a great new technology but I get frustrated when product seems to take forever to get to market.
Don't wait unless you plan to wait forever. There's always something new and shiny on the horizon!
Isn't "75% more efficient" only 75% more output? Efficiency is usually listed as lm/W which clearly would indicate 75% more efficient is 75% more lumens. On the other hand, "75% less energy" is 4 times the efficiency.
There's not going to be a big difference between a photon flung straight into your eyes and one that's reflected off something.
A red photon of X wavelength of the same energy will still be perceived the same whether it was reflected or not.
Now the difference could be in the spectrum.
The light from LEDs or CRT phosphors are more likely to be rather "narrow band" in spectrum. Basically the colours are created by having 3 narrow "mountains" of differing heights corresponding to Red, Green and Blue.
Whereas white light (or light from blackbody sources) reflecting off various stuff is more likely to generate wider "mountains".
I'm not sure if this will cause a perceivable difference in the generated image on screens. But I'm pretty sure there's a difference if you use the light for illuminating stuff e.g. a very narrow band red pigment lit by a real white light source will appear red, but could appear black under "white" light that's generated by red+green+blue LEDs (which is one of the reasons why white LED flashlights use phosphors).
Broadly speaking, usenet is an internet message board.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
There's a huge difference... The reflected light increases proportionately to ambient light, so the display won't get washed out by bright light.