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Science Technology

The Future Of Light - Organic LEDs 29

Posted by michael from the let-there-be dept.
pmbarth writes "The filament based or fluorescent light technology has not changed for a long time. However, there appear to be new lighting technologies on the horizon. Personally, how cool would it be to just 'have light', and not have a bright light-source to contend with? Bye-bye incandescents!"
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The Future Of Light - Organic LEDs More

The Future Of Light - Organic LEDs

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  • Hey! (Score:3, Informative)

    by AnalogBoy ( 51094 ) on Wednesday March 20, 2002 @07:13PM (#3197324) Journal
    This was in star trek: TOS! The return of the archons, i think...

    Okay.. i'll submit to a beating and yells of "geek!" now.

  • Sulfur Lamps (Score:2, Informative)

    by Turing Machine ( 144300 )
    These new LEDs are pretty cool. Another new technology on the horizon is the sulfur lamp [lbl.gov]

  • Not going to fly here! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Ambient light? That's creepy... that's unnatural... that's almost like going... outside... :(

  • Just seems neat (Score:2, Interesting)

    by pauldy ( 100083 )
    I could imagine one day having walls papered with this stuff and being able to adjust the brightness of a room and having it be uniform across the entire room.

  • But will people buy them? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Veramocor ( 262800 ) on Wednesday March 20, 2002 @08:03PM (#3197601)
    This is a great technology and can only get better over time. Unfortunately I'm unconvinced of potential consumer acceptance. People will usually buy something that is cheaper (incandescent bulbs) then somthing that is more expensive but will last them longer and use less electricity.

    I own a few compact flouressant bulbs which use 1/3 the electricity and last at least 3 times as long. These lights pat for themselves at least twice over. Unfortunatley not many people have adopted them because they cost more than their incandecent cousins.

    What needs to be done to gain exceptance for a better technology?

    Can we change a culture so use to one technology?

    I think awnsering these two questions have greater implications further than LED lights, such as fuel cell technology an hybrid cars.

    Veramocor
    • I own a few compact flouressant bulbs which use 1/3 the electricity and last at least 3 times as long. These lights pat for themselves at least twice over. Unfortunatley not many people have adopted them because they cost more than their incandecent cousins.


      I heard that flouressant light gives some people headaches, and doesn't feel as warm as incandecent light.
      • Depends on the manufacturer. Some of them are quite crappy, yes. But after some testing, I have replaced all of my lights with modern compact fluorescents, which produce a nice warm light and don't have a warm-up period. You can get dimmable ones, round decorator bulbs for your bathroom, recessed reflector bulbs for your ceilings, and even torch lamps.

        Try one or two out-- if they suck, put them someplace where they won't bug you much like a closet or your attic. Wouldn't it be nice if the attic lights always worked when you went up there? I haven't had to replace one so far in over 3 years.
    • I own a few compact flouressant bulbs which use 1/3 the electricity and last at least 3 times as long. These lights pat for themselves at least twice over. Unfortunatley not many people have adopted them because they cost more than their incandecent cousins.

      I avoid flourescent bulbs because the creepy buzz and headache-inducing flicker get on my nerves, particularly when you've got a couple of computer monitors competing for annoying strobe effect.

      Does anyone know if organic LEDs flicker?

      --
      Ben Coates
      • The buzz and flicker aren't from the lights themselves but rather from the powersupply - offices generally use the cheap ones that use as little power as possible. Complain to (or befriend, which works better) the facility manager and ask for a better fixture. One swap of a little grey box later, and your flourescents don't flicker or buzz. There are also bulbs with a pink tint to them to help remove the overly blue tint to the light (although they still are not full spectrum).

        --
        Evan

    • Interesting, my f-bulbs use only 1/5 the electricity and last 5 times as long. And they neither flicker at startup nor during regular runs. But I'm from Europe...

      How to change a culture? Increase the price for electricity and inform people that there are cheaper alternatives (like properly insulating/designing houses instead of air-conditioning/electric heating). Give them a bonus, e.g. lend them money at 0% interest if they build to energy-saving standards. There are a lot of possibilities...

  • Mmm...organic! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by NaturePhotog ( 317732 ) on Wednesday March 20, 2002 @08:04PM (#3197605) Homepage

    Not only energy-efficient, but tasty and better for you, too! :-)

    Also of interest was the article linked to from the posted one, about using organic LEDs for thin, bright computer displays [technologyreview.com].

  • I thought that all light bulbs are designed to die after a certain amount of use.

    If so, then it seems kind of odd that they would promote something to be better than what there is now. Why not just improve on what they have now? For instance a regular bulb that last 1,000,000 hours instead of just 1,000, would be nice. If the light bulb lasted 1,000,000 hours, and charged more for them, they could still allow the customer to save on the total number of bulbs in the long run, yet still make a little extra per bulb. I'm sure that there are a few ways that they can improve what we have now.

    Don't get me wrong. I think this new technology is cool.

    • Even if true (it smacks of urban legend to me), incandescent bulbs are very inefficient compared with fluorescent lights, either the traditional tubes or the newer compact fluorescents. Fluorescents last longer, too.

      The idea behind the lights based on organic LEDs is that they will (a) be more natural colored than traditional LEDs, which are used in stoplights and brakelights (b) use even less energy than fluorescents (c) last even longer than fluorescents, too.

    • I thought that all light bulbs are designed to die after a certain amount of use.

      Seems like a rather negative way of looking at it -- I'd say they're designed to go on working for a certain amount of use. And it's a miracle of engineering that incandescent bulbs last as long as they do. When you flip that switch an incandescent bulb filament ramps from room temperature to several thousand degrees in a fraction of a second. They had to refine the design to withstand this severe thermal cycling as many times as possible before it breaks. And they have to restrict the materials to ones that not only won't melt at that temperature, but that evaporate slowly enough. The evaporation thing is a particular problem -- not only does it eat into the filament, but said metal winds up condensed on the glass envelope, which keeps the light from getting out.

      I don't think the incandescent bulb is a good candidate for significant improvement. It's a crude idea, and it's a miracle that they kept it from going obsolete this long.

    • I thought that all light bulbs are designed to die after a certain amount of use.

      Wow. What a wierd way of looking at it. Incandescents work using an excited filiment. The material of the filiment slowly erodes (and plates the interior of a bulb - a bulb that's lasted for a long time has a metallic sheen on the inside of the glass), but that's just a byproduct of how it works. In addition, it "jumps" everytime it is turned on (which is why they often go out when you first flip on a switch). When they have eroded enough to be so thin they crack, the blub goes out.

      So, they aren't "designed to die" after a certain time any more than a rubber band is "designed to snap" after a certain number of uses. They have a rated number of hours - how long it's likely to work, but that's based on normal usage. I'll bet that rubber bands have a rated number of hours in some engineers testbook somewhere.

      --
      Evan

  • While it's true that a lot of people are ignoring the compact fluorescent bulbs right now despite their obvious advantages, I believe that the case will not be the same for organic LEDs. Because these lights will use even less power and last even longer than compact fluorescents, I think the advantages will be too extreme for consumers to ignore.

    Even if they don't catch on in (or aren't well developed for) home lighting they will still be very functional in other places. Laptop screens for example will require less power, have sharper images and be viewed more evenly from different angles.

    Also, I think that the comparison to wallpaper was meant to just be an example of how big the sheets could be, not to suggest that houses will be actually wallpapered with the sheets. I would think that if large sheets were made for home use they would probably be meant to cover the ceiling and I definitely think that this would be a lighting choice in the office.

    I think though, that the main home use would be for mounting in standard light sockets because it would be more familiar to people, less expensive and also because light from above is a lot different (some might even say, uncomfortable or impersonable) from light that comes from lamps.

    Side note about compact fluorescents: Two things that compact fluorescents have working against them besides peoples' resistance to change is that it's hard to find bulbs with brightness equivalents higher than 75W and hard to find 3-way fluorescent bulbs (I'm not even sure 3-ways exist!).
  • There are quite a few companies out there (http://www.ledtronics.com) right now who are manufacturing LED lamps (for you non techies that means "light bulb" not the fixture itself which is a "lighting instrument") which are meant to be used in standard US medium screw base sockets. I just discovered this the other day and I think that it is way cool! You can also get flashight bulbs to replace the inkies that you currently have in your flashlight (alas, the lowest voltage I've found so far is 6V which is twice the voltage of a 2 AA Maglite).

    Ever since I saw those little blue night lights, I've been waiting for this technology to come to general home lighting. If this organic sheet material ever hits the market, I'll be one of the first to put up a ceiling border in every room. I especially like the idea of "papering" the underside of my kitchen cabinets with this stuff for the best in counter lighting. I only hope that the rest of the world will see what a great thing this is and that builders and remodelers will make it a construction industry standard.

    Of course, I would expect corporations to embrace this as a mode of lighting for their offices since they must pay some steep electrical bills in lighting alone. Anything to lower overhead costs.

    It would of course be especially great if they can produce this material to create full spectrum light. Just my hopes for part of a more environmentally friendly future.

  • Weird Tech Paper (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Prof_Dagoski ( 142697 ) on Thursday March 21, 2002 @08:10AM (#3199530) Homepage


    This reminds of a weird tech paper from Digital Equipment Labs I once read. Some engineers were screwing around on break and one of them hooked their kim-chee to a power source and some test equipment. They discovered two things: one the kim-chee acted like a rectifier and that it also acted like a LED. They then did some preliminary research into the field of vegetable electronics. I'm not sure how serious this really was, but it was a fun read. This used to be on the web, but I haven't seen it in ages. Has anyone else read this?

    • This is how I make my pickle glow. [discoverchemistry.com]
    • I think you are referring to The Light Emitting Vegetable Diode [tiac.net], which was linked here [memepool.com] a few months ago. From the page:


      The kimchi, as you might guess, glowed a pleasant yellow as it gave off a rather unpleasant vapor. (The Dustbuster and carbon filter system was not sufficient to keep up with the smell.) Then Dan Jackson noticed the oscilloscope trace. The lower trace showed the voltage across the kimchi. It was running at about 140 V RMS. Then he saw the upper trace. The upper trace showed current pulses of about 4 amperes in amplitude. Dan called out "Hey! The kimchi is acting as a rectifier!"

  • While the material now uses 25 times more power for its light output than fluorescent bulbs, Duggal says organic light-emitting diodes' efficiency could ultimately surpass that of fluorescent lighting.

    That's awfully optimistic. If improving their efficiency was that easy, why hasn't it been done already?
  • A few years back, ultra-efficient RF lighting technology [fusionlighting.com] was all over the news. So far that seems to be vaporware (no pun intended).
    • I mentioned these above (sulfur lamps).

      If you check the "Sulfur Lamps" link on the URL you posted, they're claiming commercial availability in 2002, i.e., this year.

      These things put out upwards of 150 lumens for every wat of power (compare to about 17 lumens/watt for an incandescent bulb... nearly 10 times more efficient). They also produce almost no UV or IR.

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