Nanosys Do Efforts to Improve LEDs

As we all know that in this struggling economy, businesses as well as the general populace are all struggling to do more with less. In the case of LED and nanotechnology, however, that may not be necessarily a bad thing.

Take for example the work showcased at CES by Nanosys, a company that has developed a method to add nanomaterials to blue LEDs that improves the appearance of LED lighting. Their efforts have created an LED light that combines the energy efficiency of a blue LED; with a nanotechnology layer that alters its blue appearance into a warm white light that is better than standard LED lighting.

The benefits of the added nanotech material not only means improving the quality of the emitted light for backlit LED displays
, but doing so while still maintaining a low power profile. Plus Nanosys claims, the process can be added to a company’s assembly line for electronic products without the need for major retooling.

So expect to see better looking LED lighting in the near future as Nanosys nanotechnology starts to appear in televisions and other lighting products beginning later this year.

LED light Prices Dropped

Since prices dropped by half, LED lights are selling like hot cakes this year.

The surge in demand for the new generation of light bulbs has quickly emptied store shelves, prompting more manufacturers to jump into the market.

LED lights first appeared about a decade ago, but their poor brightness limited them to emergency use. Recent advances in longevity and brightness, however, have turned their fortunes around completely.

Today’s LED bulbs cost as little as ?4,000 but boast a longevity of 40,000 hours, which is about 40 times the life span of incandescent bulbs. They also consume nearly 90 percent less electricity than incandescent bulbs.

Compared with fluorescent light bulbs, LED lamps are six times more durable and use at least 40 percent less energy.

Rising public awareness of environmental issues is also boosting LED sales. Countries embarking on “green” initiatives are letting incandescent bulbs fall by the wayside as they move to save energy.

Under the previous government led by the Liberal Democratic Party, then Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Akira Amari announced a plan last year to cease production and sales of incandescent bulbs by 2012.

As a result, demand for LED bulbs is outpacing supply.

“We are swamped by orders and just can’t keep pace with demand,” said Takahisa Uzumaki, senior manager at Toshiba Lighting & Technology Corp., a unit of Toshiba Corp., which developed LED bulbs in 2007.

Sales of LED lights spiked this summer as prices began to come down. At one large store in Tokyo’s Akihabara electronics shopping district, “Sold Out” signs were seen at the LED light section.

“Many customers buy LED bulbs just to try them out,” said a shop clerk.

In June, Sharp Corp. unveiled a plan to sell LED bulbs for about ?4,000, less than half the price of products made by other companies. Then more manufacturers, including Panasonic Corp. and NEC Corp., entered the fray.

Competition is heating up because startups founded only five or six years ago have entered the market, since it doesn’t take large facilities to mass-produce LED bulbs. That’s one of biggest differences of LEDs over incandescent and fluorescent lamps.

As new companies crowd into the LED business, Toshiba Lighting is taking on the challenge by halving its prices. Their bulbs now retail for under ?5,000.

The Toshiba group is fostering the business and betting it will turn into a hot sector.

“We intend to boost annual LED lighting sales to ?350 billion by March 2016 from the current ?20 billion,” said Masashi Muromachi, a senior executive at the parent firm.

Sharp aspires to raise annual sales to ?50 billion in the near future.

With energy conservation a matter of global concern, manufacturers also anticipate brisk demand abroad. Toshiba aims to get overseas sales to account for 30 percent or more of its total LED sales by the year ending in March 2016.

Panasonic is also setting its eyes on foreign markets.

While they are experiencing a sudden burst of popularity, LED bulbs still leave something to be desired technologically. They are more expensive and less bright than their fluorescent counterparts.

The new type of light bulb can become standard in every household only when manufacturers address and overcome these weaknesses.

Blowable LED Candle Lamp

Could you imagine that turn on or off lamps without switches but just a blow? Sure! Ok, I will introduce this kind of lamps following.

With so much of artificiality and heaps of tech substitutes around, any resemblance to natural stuff is refreshing. Candles were one of our resorts before Thomas Edison hatched the bulb, so these LED Blow On Off candles are here to remind you about the good old days.

The flames controls are just a Blow away. It has an edge over the usual candles as they turn off when you blow but this one will blow on. There is a master on/off switch at the bottom that helps your realize the blow controls.

A blue and yellow flame is what we have to choose from. I wonder why the makers didn’t think of introducing the VIBGYOR scheme here. No solar inputs here, 3 AAA batteries provide the necessary juice for as much as 300 hours. Bizarre, huh? They retail in the price bracket of $11.99 to $14.99.

This one surely joins the league of unconventional lighting devices with Elephant Lamp, the Candle Lamp Concept and the Rainbow LED Lamps.

LED Wind Turbine Light

Windmills have inspired Mathmos to come up with Wind turbine LED lights, and you can use these lights in your gardens or inside your own room for your personal leisure.

Wind turbines are the best eco-friendly sources of energy and in this day and age we definitely need more alternative, reliable and long lasting sources of energy. These lights function based on the same principle of windmills, and they light up as you blow on them.

So you can now enjoy a relaxed breezy evening and a nice dinner in your garden lit up with these LED lights for only $14.99 at ThinkGeek.com. They are also small enough to be mounted on your bedroom window too, if you fancy that! Some other eco-friendly lights and lamps that you can look at are the Spray Can lighting and Spark green energy lamp.

Sure! It is really cool. What is the application of this LED? I think it will be not widely used in our life but the idea is helpful to our future design.

The Advantages of LED Lights

As we all know that the future of energy efficient lighting is LED. Not only are LED’s environmentally friendly, the light represents a true white light. A recent press release printed in the Village News on ways to cut energy expenditures missed the mark completely.

Although it is true that CFL bulbs do save energy, they also contain mercury, which is a hazardous material, and these bulbs cannot be disposed of easily. If the bulb is broken, there is a huge problem because the mercury is disbursed throughout the area.

The future in lighting is the use of LED (light emitting diodes) lamps.

First, the operational life of current white LED lamps approaches 100,000 hours. The key strength of LED lighting is reduced power consumption approaching 80 percent efficiency, compared to an incandescent lamp, which operates at about 20 percent efficiency. LED lamps are now available on the Internet and at Wal-Mart.

If, in fact, a bulb burns out in your lifetime, it can be disposed of easily and if broken there is no contamination.

I would urge all Village News readers to learn about LEDs and stop purchasing the dangerous CFL mercury contained lamps.

The folks responsible for traffic lights have started replacing the red, yellow and green lamps with LEDs; you can distinguish the LED lamp because the light is made up of clusters of round LEDs which make up the light.

I recently purchased a GE PAR 30 long neck LED lamp at Wal-Mart to try in my kitchen ceiling. I am very pleased and it only draws 10 watts of power, compared to the 65 watt incandescent bulb that the LED replaced.

Comparing Xenon Lights and LED Light

An updated study has been published by Limited, developer of thin-form supercapacitors that compare flash solutions for camera phones — xenon, standard LEDs powered by a battery, and high-current LEDs powered by a supercapacitor using the company’s BriteFlash(TM) power architecture. The study tested each solution’s ability to deliver the light energy needed to take digital-still-camera-quality pictures in low-light conditions, and also compared shutter requirements, ease of design-in, safety and size.

The original report from October 2006 compared light power and energy using 1.3 to 3.2-megapixel camera phones. The new report includes data from 5-megapixel camera phones released in the last year, and also considers advancements in camera sensors, xenon flash units, high-power white LEDs (WLEDS) and LED flash drivers.

Tests again showed that the LED BriteFlash approach delivers more light energy than most xenon flashes in a thin form factor suitable for slim camera phones and digital cameras.

Clear pictures in dim environments require sufficient light energy — the total amount of light received by each pixel in the camera sensor — during image-capture time. “People often wrongly assume that light power, which is the brightness or intensity of the flash, is the key because it’s what draws our attention, but it’s really the light energy that counts,” said Pierre Mars, CAP-XX vice president of applications engineering.

To calculate light energy, one would multiply light power (in lux) by the duration of the flash exposure (in seconds): Light power (lux) x flash exposure time (sec) = light energy (lux.sec). Ten to fifteen lux.sec of light energy is ideal for high-resolution pictures:

–  Xenon flash tubes driven by electrolytic storage capacitors deliver
higher light power, but over a very short flash exposure.
–  High-current LEDs driven by a supercapacitor deliver lower light
power, but over a longer flash exposure to generate more light energy.

Flash solutions tested:

–  Xenon: SonyEricsson K800, LG KU990, Nokia N82 and Samsung G800, all
with 5-megapixel cameras but with varying size electrolytic storage
capacitors.
–  Standard battery-powered LEDs: Nokia N73 (3.2-megapixel) and N96 (5-
megapixel)
–  Supercapacitor-powered LEDs: To demonstrate the BriteFlash approach,
CAP-XX used a small, thin (20mm x 18mm x 3.8mm thick), dual-cell
supercapacitor to drive a two-LED array of Philips LUXEON® PWM4s at 2A
each or 4A total during the flash pulse.

LED Lights Show Great Promise

As we all know that LED technology shows great promise in lighting the way for Tech to a more economic and environmentally-friendly direction.

Facilities faculty has completed several lighting renovations already on campus, including converting all the lighting in the Tennenbaum Auditorium to LED lamps. This project alone reduced electricity consumption by 39.2%, and light per square foot more than doubled. They also installed LED can lights on the second floor of the Price Gilbert Library.

“We are currently working on several projects in the IBB building to convert high ceiling fixtures to LED and will eventually expand this to other buildings. The architecture building is next on the list,” said Sanford Fong, Facilities department Electrical Engineer I.

Heat, output and energy usage are the greatest factors in LEDs’ benefits. Since the lights do not rely on a filament, they don’t burn out as quickly and less of the energy emitted is heat (very beneficial for stage work, which is often under extremely hot rows of lights). Since less energy is emitted as heat, it does not require as much energy to produce the light, saving money.

Thanks to a recent cost drop in semiconductor material, they are now a viable option for widespread use. This has opened a window for mass-emplacement of LEDs, like in department stores.

Walmart is pursuing improvements to energy and cost savings by installing LED lighting in their refrigerated cases. The new fixtures and dimming capabilities could net 66% in energy savings. If 500 Wal-mart stores were to use these, it would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 35 million pounds and save the company $2.6 million per year. The lights could add over three years to the refrigerated cases’ lighting lifetime.

LED lighting can also be applied to large parking lot lights, medium hallway and stairwell lights and small classroom lights. They can last over 50,000 hours (over five years) and the lower power consumption with equal or greater luminosity than conventional lighting could save big money for Tech.

“LEDs save a great deal over incandescent lamps. For example, the can light we are installing in the Petit building is a 12-Watt fixture comparable to an 80-Watt incandescent in lighting output,” Fong said. Such a fixture could save 85% in energy.

Facilities will soon procure a street light test unit to evaluate more demanding applications on campus like streetlights, emergency lights and shop lights. Thanks to the higher power output and longevity, any light fixture that is on a great deal of time or is too hard to reach is a good candidate for an LED application.

Indoor lighting sees a change for the better as well. The pervasive use of fluorescent lighting in classrooms has garnered criticism for eye strain and headaches from the (though too fast to notice) lights’ high-frequency flickering; however, LED lighting is flicker-free. Fluorescent lamps are also less efficient, less longevous, and less environmentally friendly (they contain mercury). In this sense, changing the lights may actually directly improve student and faculty health and performance.

Tech has been a leading institution in LED technology. In 2002, ECE professor Russell Dupuis earned the highest national honor in science, the National Medal of Technology, for his work in developing and commercializing LEDs in applications like traffic lights and automotive lighting.

Novel LED Key Light

Do you have the trouble that always finding keys at home? The LED Key Light from Lexon stands out among a host of other keychain LED lights that resemble pigs, chickens, laser pointers and whatnot by looking like… a key.

Available in green, red or purple, the LED light is powered by a pair of CR1220 button batteries and the case can be easily opened without using tools for quick battery changes on the go.

The outer case is made from soft rubber – just squeeze once and the mini LED in the key’s nose end comes on; squeeze again and it turns off. The key light comes with a ring-type clip which allows for the addition of actual keys, or facilitates attachment to purses, rucksacks, belt loops and so on.

Using the LED Key Light, you will never find your keys everywhere.

Long-life Panasonic’s LED Lightbulb

How often do you change lightbulbs? Every few months, maybe? It is found that the early generation led light bulbs are pretty weak. Well, when Panasonic’s new LED bulbs hit shelves, change that time frame from months to decades.

Yes, these insanely efficient bulbs keep shining and shining, providing the brightness of a traditional 60-watt bulb. Of course, they won’t be cheap, with pricing set at about $40 a bulb in Japan when they hit stores in October. But seeing as they cost a mere $2 to run per year in energy costs and last 19 years, that seems like a good deal in the long run.

Ultrathin Inorganic LEDs

There is now a new process under development to create ultrathin, ultrasmall inorganic light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and assembling them into large arrays, which offers new classes of lighting and display systems with interesting properties.

Applications for the arrays, which you can print onto flat or flexible substrates ranging from glass to plastic and rubber, include general illumination, high-resolution home theater displays, wearable health monitors, and biomedical imaging devices.

“Our goal is to marry some of the advantages of inorganic LED technology with the scalability, ease of processing, and resolution of organic LEDs,” said John Rogers, the Flory-Founder chair professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois.

Compared to organic LEDs, inorganic LEDs are brighter, more robust, and longer-lived. Organic LEDs, however, are attractive because you can form them on flexible substrates, in dense, interconnected arrays. The researchers’ new technology combines features of both.

“By printing large arrays of ultrathin, ultrasmall inorganic LEDs and interconnecting them using thin-film processing, we can create general lighting and high-resolution display systems that otherwise could not be built with the conventional ways that inorganic LEDs are made, manipulated, and assembled,” Rogers said.

To overcome requirements on device size and thickness associated with conventional wafer dicing, packaging, and wire bonding methods, researchers developed epitaxial growth techniques for creating LEDs with sizes up to 100 times smaller than usual. They also developed printing processes for assembling these devices into arrays on stiff, flexible, and stretchable substrates.

As part of the growth process, a sacrificial layer of material embeds beneath the LEDs. When fabrication is complete, a wet chemical etchent removes this layer, leaving the LEDs undercut from the wafer but still tethered at anchor points.

To create an array, a rubber stamp contacts the wafer surface at selected points, lifts off the LEDs at those points, and transfers them to the desired substrate.

“The stamping process provides a much faster alternative to the standard robotic ‘pick and place’ process that manipulates inorganic LEDs one at a time,” Rogers said. “The new approach can lift large numbers of small, thin LEDs from the wafer in one step, and then print them onto a substrate in another step.”

By shifting position and repeating the stamping process, LEDs can transfer to other locations on the same substrate. In this fashion, you can create large light panels and displays from small LEDs made in dense arrays on a single, comparatively small wafer. And, because the LEDs can be placed far apart and still provide sufficient light output, the panels and displays can be nearly transparent. The thin device geometries allow the use of thin-film processing methods, rather than wire bonding, for interconnects.

In addition to solid-state lighting, instrument panels, and display systems, the new method also allows for flexible and even stretchable sheets of printed LEDs, with potential use in the health-care industry.

“Wrapping a stretchable sheet of tiny LEDs around the human body offers interesting opportunities in biomedicine and biotechnology,” Rogers said, “including applications in health monitoring, diagnostics, and imaging.”