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Breakthrough In LED Construction Increases Efficiency By 57 Percent
Zothecula writes: With LEDs being the preferred long-lasting, low-energy method for replacing less efficient forms of lighting, their uptake has dramatically increased over the past few years. However, despite their luminous outputs having increased steadily over that time, they still fall behind more conventional forms of lighting in terms of brightness. Researchers at Princeton University claim to have come up with a way to change all that by using nanotechnology to increase the output of organic LEDs by 57 percent.
Your equipment will now have 57% brighter indicator LEDs on the front to burn your retinas at night!
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All they've changed is how they contain it to limit the amount of light lose to absorption. I mean, to the user of LEDs the distinction is pretty irrelevant, but if you were wondering how you could improve on such a fundamental electrical component, that's how.
Just saying.
The main barrier to large scale consumer and commercial adoption of LEDs is cost per unit.
That said, good news!
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Can't wait for my 57% brighter Christmas tree.
You'll see that sucker from space.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The article explains that the light extraction is increased from 3% to 60%. This is a factor of 20 increase in light output. So compared to a "normal" LED, this new technology is actually 2000% more efficient.
There's a big difference between "LEDs" and "Organic LEDs". To the best of my knowledge, organic LEDs aren't used for "lighting".
ya know I loved it when they first invented this whole new bright LED technology back 5 or so years ago... I was so impressed by the street lights, and anything else that used them - I could easily tell the new LEDs from the old ones. But when my old clock radio died, i went to wal mart and bought a cheapo 20 buck LED lit digital alarm clock with cool looking blue light. But the fucking thing is Soooo bright that at night it's like having the sun in my bedroom with me. I was thinking about sticking some semi transparent plastic over it, but I couldn't really find anything suitable. so, i just throw clothes on top of it and it becomes useless unless i care enough about the time to dig it up.
IEEE Spectrum also has coverage, along with an excellent technical explanation.
...because it doesn't pay very well to sell you something that'll last forever, whether it's an Oled screen or LED bulb.
:(
It's no coincidence that the CFLs die off after 1-2 years albeit they're supposed to last 10-20 years with normal usage. My first Philips 11w CFLs that I bought 20 years ago, still glows like mad and simply refuse to die. That is back when the CFLs was new, and cost like 40 bucks just for ONE bulb, but hey...it's actually worth the money, it still is my best bulb.
With LED's, it's a walk in the park for the industry to make them last less, all you need to do for your LED to last less than specified, is to OVERDRIVE them just a little, a little higher current and the LED's will die rapidly, they should be able to make the new LED lamps last just out the warranty period (that in most countries AFAIK is around 3-6 months), or cheap enough to avoid the warranty altogether.
There is nothing wrong with the LED's themselves, (we're talking the components...DIODES...not the whole circuit with drivers and all), I ordered strong RGB leds from China many MANY years ago, they're still glowing on my homemade alarm-systems so strong that I can use them as night-lights, yes...4 years later 24H day use...they still glow enough to lit up an entire room. And I just used Ohms law + 1% resistor values to calculate the right resistor value for my circuits. You can pretty much BET the manufacturers will "miscalculate" these values, or make the drivers for the stronger LED's last MUCH less in order to keep pumping out new ones for the consumers to waste and waste.
I'd rather pay a proper price for my LED lamps - and keep our environment safe from this mad overproduction that now has escalated totally out of hands.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
The real breakthrough in LED lighting is getting rid of electrolytic capacitors in the power supply. Those are currently the components with the shortest life. See "Elimination of an Electrolytic Capacitor in AC/DC Light-Emitting Diode (LED) Driver With High Input Power Factor and Constant Output Current" Variations on that technology are now going into production LED lighting units. This should push unit lifetimes up from 20,000 hours to that of the LEDs, 40,000 or so. (Provided the quality of the LEDs doesn't slip.)
The immediate commercial demand is in the displays of portable electronics, where this technology will decrease power consumption and deliver better contrast, especially in daylight.
I think that most people would rather have 2x battery life or 2x brighter light in their flashlight, rather than it lasting twice as long, considering that I'm yet to see IC of flashlight to die on me.
While it seems like a good idea to have a low voltage circuit, there some unfortunate realities that have to be taken into consideration. Mainly you need much thicker wiring to keep your resistive losses low. It's actually cheaper to have a transformer in the light fixture itself than it is to run heavy guage wire everywhere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
So lets pretend that we've just completed writing this code, as opposed to having just completed sabotaging it -Altera
I just purchased a new alarm clock and it bright enough that I could read by it's light. Since I keep it close to my bed I had to put two layers of tinted plastic over the display in order to sleep with it on the lowest setting. now it's almost impossible to read the time during the day.
How can I tell whether a given LED bulb from the shop has this tech? What companies currently use this tech?
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