LEDs that Burn 10 Times Brighter

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/39726/?p1=A1

[font face=Times, Times New Roman, Serif][font size=5]LEDs that Burn 10 Times Brighter[/font]
[font size=4]Startup Soraa thinks it can make LEDs cheap enough to replace regular bulbs.[/font]

Monday, February 13, 2012
By Phil McKenna

[font size=3]LED lightbulbs promise a highly efficient, nontoxic, long-lasting alternative to today's incandescent and halogen lightbulbs. Lighting entire rooms using LEDs has, however, proved both technically challenging and expensive.

Soraa, a startup based in Fremont, California, has developed a new type of LED that it says generates 10 times more light from the same quantity of active material used in other LEDs. The company's first product is a 12-watt bulb that uses 75 percent less energy than a similarly illuminating 50-watt halogen bulb. Company officials would not disclose the cost of the bulb, but say it will pay for itself in less than one year through energy savings.

LEDs contain a semiconducting material that lights up when current passes through it, and are commonly used for low-light applications such as illuminating computer screens.

LEDs are usually made by growing a thin layer of gallium nitride on top of a sapphire, silicon carbine, or silicon substrate. Soraa takes a different approach. It uses gallium nitride for the substrate. This reduces a mismatch in the crystal structure between the two layers, which causes the performance of LEDs to diminish as current densities increase. By reducing such mismatches, or "dislocations," by a factor of 1,000, Soraa officials say they can push 10 times more current through a given area of active layer material. The increase in current density results in a tenfold increase in LED brightness.

...[/font][/font]

[salvorhardin]

1. That's an odd phrase

The company's first product is a 12-watt bulb that uses 75 percent less energy than a similarly illuminating 50-watt halogen bulb.

Well, of course it uses 75% less energy. 12 watts is 24% of 50 watts, thus it actually uses 76% less energy.

[OnlinePoker]

7. I think the point is it produces the same light for 25% of the energy consumption. n/t

Last edited Tue Feb 14, 2012, 02:56 PM - Edit history (1)

[Dead_Parrot]

8. It's one of my pet peeves...

...That we usually measure light in Watts, not lumens (or, if you want to be all archaic, candlepower). And it's not even emitted watts, but consumed watts. Based on a now obsolete (or nearly so) form of lighting.

Peering at a CFL pack I've got kicking around the office, it does say "1200 lm" but it small writing on the back: On the front, it cheerfully announces that 18W=100W, thereby rendering 5000 years of mathematics pointless.

Mutter, grumble.

[Javaman]

12. Hush you! stop with the facts and clarification of reality!

don't make me come back there!

[Dead_Parrot]

13. Sorry, I'll keep quiet

^{I'm still right, though.}

[Javaman]

14. +1 nt

[Nihil]

16. I quite like the idea that LEDs "burn" in the first place.

[Dead_Parrot]

17. Oh, don't get me fucking started.

I'll start banging on about 'firing arrows'.

[Nihil]

19. Oh stop it you bar steward ...

How did you know that was another one that gets me? Hmmmm...

[kysrsoze]

2. Interesting article. Thanks. I read an article in Wired, on how complicated this effort is...

to build an efficient, correct-color, long-lasting and affordable bulb. I had thought it would be such a slam-dunk since LEDs have been around for decades.

[Historic NY]

3. Was actually looking at some last night....

since December I've seen lots of newer designs. I was looking for something for my outside (3) 3 bulb lantern driveway lights. Notice some new bulbs in lights but not individually yet. I lkie the candle tip type

[David__77]

4. Hopefully these can be made more cost effective.

I do doubt the claim of a one-year payback for the lamp though. Maybe if you operated it continuously, 8,760 hours for a year, and had very high electricity rates; otherwise, it's doubtful you would get payback for an LED in one year of use...

[BlueToTheBone]

5. Gallium isn't a rare earth mineral, either.

I'm glad to see that this is the process they are using. Here's some info about gallium
http://www.lenntech.com/periodic/elements/ga.htm
allium

Solid gallium is a blue-gray metal with orthorhombic crystalline structure; very pure gallium has a stunning silvery color. Gallium is solid at normal room temperatures, but as well as mercury, cesium, and rubidium it becomes liquid when heated slightly. Solid gallium is soft enough to be cut with a knife. It is stable in air and water; but it reacts with and dissolves in acids and alkalis.

Applications

Liquid gallium wets porcelain and glass surfaces; it forms a bright, highly reflective surface when coated on glass. It can be used to create brilliant mirrors. Gallium easily alloys with most metals, so it is used to form low-melting alloys. The plutonium pits of nuclear weapons employ an alloy with gallium to stabilize the allotropes of plutonium.
Analog integrated circuits are the most common application for gallium, with optoelectronic devices (mostly laser diodes and light-emitting diodes) as the second largest end use. Gallium has semiconductor properties, especially as gallium arsendite (GaAs). This can convert electricity to light and is used in light emitting diodes (LEDs) for electronic display and watches.
Gallium is used in some high temperature thermometers.

Gallium in the environment

Gallium does not exist in pure form in nature, and gallium compounds are not a primary source of extraction. Gallium is more abundant than lead but much less accessible bacause it has not been selectively concentrated into minerals by any geological process, so it tends to be widely dispersed. Several ores, such as the aluminum ore bauxite, contain small amount of gallium, and coal may have a relatively high gallium content.

[KurtNYC]

6. Guess what the first secret cartel was ?

Incandescent lightbulbs used to last 2500 hours or longer but the major manufacturers worldwide set a goal to reduce that life to 1000 hours. They would test each others bulbs to make sure none of them lasted very long. The average life of an incandescent bulb is now 800 hours.


(at link: YouTube: The Lightbulb Conspiracy - French documentary)

Technology alone won't solve the mess we're in.

[hunter]

9. Planned obsolescence is real, the "Lightbulb Conspiracy" not so much.

It may even be a superb bit of misdirection, but I'm not going to sit back an hour and watch it, since it seemed so unpromising...

Longer lasting incandescent light bulbs are less efficient. The thousand hour target was set as a standard that balanced efficiency and the willingness of customers to replace bulbs. The physics is pretty simple. The filaments of more efficient incandescent lights run hotter and don't last as long. A bulb that is only expected to produce an inefficient dim orange glow can last a hundred years. If you run an ordinary incandescent 120 volt bulb at 90 volts it won't be as bright, but it will last a very long time. In the USA "Long Life" bulbs are simply 130 volt bulbs that will last a long time on 110-115 volt power systems.

It's very similar to how standards for "regular" gasoline were reached. Higher octane gasolines enable the use of higher compression engines which are more efficient, but more expensive to build. These higher compression engines also emit more oxides of nitrogen, and in the age of leaded gasolines, more lead. High octane gasolines are also more expensive to refine. It's no conspiracy that "regular" U.S. gasoline has an (R+M)/2 octane of 87, or that common cars are built to use this fuel. Governments, auto manufacturers, and oil refiners came to a common agreement.

In a lot of ways Henry Ford invented "planned obsolescence." He paid keen attention to his replacement part business. If some replacement part was rarely ordered, he'd tell his engineers to cut costs on the manufacture of the part until the replacement rate for that part was similar to other parts. If a part was replaced too often, he'd order his engineers to beef it up.

What happened was we got cars that had to be "serviced" every 3000 miles, and weren't reliable transportation beyond a 100,000 miles. Best you buy a brand new car before the 100,000 mile mark or you'd often be stuck on the side of the road as parts randomly failed.

That was most certainly "planned obsolescence," a conspiracy between the big three U.S. automakers, and it wasn't broken until foreign companies like Toyota and Volvo upped the ante with 300,000+ miles engineering targets for major components.

[OKIsItJustMe]

10. I'm sorry, but… this is BS

Have you ever seen an Edison light bulb? (I have.)

Here’s a web page dedicated to one of the most famous ones:
http://www.centennialbulb.org/

They’re long lasting, but inefficient.


That’s why people looked for a better/brighter/more efficient filament:

http://americanhistory.si.edu/lighting/bios/coolidge.htm

"I remember this circumstance very well because of the excitement and surprise and incredulity which he manifested at the time. He asked me over and over again what it was. I told him that it was pure tungsten wire, only to have his question repeated again and again."
-- William D. Coolidge recounting a conversation with German lamp inventor Fritz Blau, 1909

[wtmusic]

18. I have, too.

Filament made of bamboo. Burning in his laboratory ever since he made them.

[hunter]

11. Not a bad documentary.

Badly misnamed.

Starts with a computer printer, the modern day very most craptacular example of planned obsolescence and absurdly expensive consumables.

[bhollen76]

15. LEDs that Burn 10 Times Brighter

LED bulbs are energy saver. It's a good news to the consumers to use it more and more.

http://www.fastmr.com/prod/321065_geothermal_power_global_market_size_technology.aspx