Nanotech Could Make Incandescent Light Bulbs As Efficient As LEDs (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit writes: Thomas Edison would be pleased. Researchers have come up with a way to dramatically improve the efficiency of his signature invention, the incandescent light bulb. The approach uses nanoengineered mirrors to recycle much of the heat produced by the filament and convert it into additional visible light. The new-age incandescents are still far from a commercial product, but their efficiency is already nearly as good as commercial LED bulbs, while still maintaining a warm old-fashioned glow.

Comments

Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't wait to get back to the days of changing each light bulb in my house a couple of times each year.

Re:Great!

[Firethorn]

Filament bulbs can last 5+ years, if you engineer them to, especially at the "warmer feeling" lower temperatures.

They can make them last centuries. The current longest lasting filament bulb is at 114 years and over 1M hours.

The 'trick' is that the heavier and cooler the filament it, the longer it lasts - but the less efficient it is at making light.

So a .25 cent bulb that is engineered to last about 3-6 months in normal usage is at a sweet spot - you could make it last longer, but it'd use more than .25 cents worth of extra electricity in that time. So it's cheaper to make it a bit more energy efficient at the cost of life span.

Of course, equations change as the price of electricity goes up.

Re:Great!

[Firethorn]

I'm old enough to remember taking our burnt out bulbs down to the local Edison to exchange for free new ones.

Electric company, I take it? Consider what I said, the electric company could have been 'rent seeking' in a completely different way than Phillips. Sure, they're perfectly happy handing you 75W bulbs that last darn near forever, but produce the same amount of light as the Phillips 60W that doesn't last as long.

That extra 15W could garner them an extra $13/year if the light's on all the time. Not bad for a giveaway of an under 25 cent bulb, bought in bulk. Cost differences for varying light output and longevity amount to a rounding error given how small the tungsten element is and that 'power' depends on the shape. Thicker element = longer lasting higher power bulb. Shorter element = shorter lasting higher power bulb. Thinner/longer = lower power. Balance to fit.

Re:Great!

[Firethorn]

You make it sound like the absurdly short life of incandescent light bulbs neatly correlates to its efficiency.

Well, I wouldn't go that far. It's a value that can be tweaked, it's not infinitely adjustable in range between a 100% efficient bulb that's a camera flash to a 0% efficient bulb(well, 0% would be doable).

And yes, I was kind of not properly rating the effect of the vacuum or noble fill of a bulb.

As for driving to a store to get replacements? Who, back in the day, didn't keep bulbs on hand and just pick up bulbs as part of a larger shopping trip? Heck, even with LEDs I only recently put my last LED in and need to restock. Worst case I grab a bulb from somewhere less used.

When its cold enough, the entropy from my desk lamp simply causes the electric heater to take a little longer before turning on.

Or, if you're in a cold enough climate to not have direct resistance heating, you're back to still wanting electric efficient bulbs because the heater, whether heat pump or fossil fuel, is a lot cheaper than electric heat.

Re:Not a "warm glow"

[Junta]

They mean warm in the sense of color temperature (yellowish).

Re:Too bad science class drop outs banned incandes

[Microlith]

They did legislate efficiencies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

B. Lighting Energy Efficiency

        Requires roughly 25 percent greater efficiency for light bulbs, phased in from 2012 through 2014. This effectively bans the manufacturing and importing of most current incandescent light bulbs, though by 2013 at least one company had introduced a redesigned incandescent bulb for which it claimed 50 percent greater efficiency than conventional incandescents.[18]
        Various specialty bulbs, including appliance bulbs, "rough service" bulbs, colored lights, plant lights, and 3-way bulbs, are exempt from these requirements as well as light bulbs currently less than 40 watts or more than 150 watts. This exempts stage lighting and landscape lighting.
        Requires roughly 200 percent greater efficiency for light bulbs, or similar energy savings, by 2020.

So if they can make an incandescent that meets those requirements, who cares. Now go make another grievously uninformed post.

I like my LEDs...

[blankinthefill]

Aside from questions of longevity, I honestly much prefer the availability of light color options that LEDs provide. After getting several LEDs that are substantially cooler in color than normally available incandescents/CFLs, I never want to go back. Add to that the fact that I can GET warmer colored LEDs if I desire, and the fact that I can use LED lights that package other abilities into their package (like wireless speakers), and I just don't see the consumer draw other than some rose colored glasses. (Maybe for dimmable bulbs, which I know LEDs struggled with for awhile but they seem to have overcome that also... This also ignores the brightness of the lightbulb, as LEDs have just generally been brighter [a good thing imo] than comparable incandescents and CFLs in my experience. Maybe the new tech solves that, but still probably not worth it as a consumer is my feeling.)

Great, but LEDs improve dramatically every quarter

[Anonymous Coward]

There are some crazy innovations happening in LED lighting. To the point where stock on shelves is becoming obsolete in a matter of months.

All white LEDs are essentially florescent lamps. - A blue-range LED excites a phosphor that makes white light. You can tune the phosphor mix to get whatever color range you want. "Warm" Led lights are completely indistinguishable from incandescent, and in may cases can be "Warmer"

So basically you have an emitter with a glob on tob.

In the past everyone was focusing on getting the emitter more powerful, and putting one or two in a light.

That approach is completely obsolete - Too much heat in a tiny space, extremely high drive current requiring more expensive power supplies, light comes from a single point source. (Single emitter is good for some applications but for home lighting its not great)

Now they've developed chip-on-glass techniques that lay down lots of tiny LEDs on a strip of glass which are all then wired in serries, then are covered in a soft polymer that contains the phosphor. The polymer both protects the chips and their wiring while providing a large surface area to emit white light.

The strip arrays are cheap to make (completely automated) and guess what happens when you power a bunch of strips in series (About 80-200 chips at a time)? You can drive it at like 60-100 volts. At that voltage the power supplies are CHEAP because you're only drawing a few hundred ma. Everything gets cheaper and more efficient.

Re:Phonograph

[Anonymous Coward]

Thomas Edison didn't invent much of anything...he just patented the inventions that his staff came up with.

He would only be pleased by this technology if he could get a patent on it. Otherwise, he would probably campaign to squash it, as he did with many of Tesla's awesome inventions.

I'd go urinate on Edison's grave, but that asshole isn't worth the trip out.

Re:Why stop there?

[PPH]

LED bulbs are superior to everything else, prove me wrong. (you can't)

I put an LED bulb in my Lava Lamp. Now the goo just sits there on the bottom.

Re:but do they last as long?

[tlambert]

Phillips. I still have a Phillips CFL from 15 years ago (with three arch tubes) that hasn't died yet.

They would probably like to buy it from you so they can figure out what went wrong with it not dying, so they can prevent it happening again...

This is not a solution for LED

[GPS Pilot]

If this was such a good solution, it could probably be used for LED lights as well

No. Incandescent filaments have to be hot to produce light, but with its entirely different mechanism, reflecting infrared back onto a light-emitting diode will not help it produce more light. Heat is NOT good for the diode. LED bulb designs actively do the opposite of these nanomirrors: they transfer heat away from the diode. (You may have noticed the fins on some LED bulbs. Their purpose is to radiate heat and keep the diode cooler.)