White LEDs: A Revolution in Lighting?

From all those little lights on gadgets and computer equipment to the fucking bright-ass billboards in Las Vegas, light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are all around us. They've replaced colored incandescent, fluorescent, and halogen bulbs in all sorts of applications. Beyond being far more efficient and far longer lasting than other types of bulbs, they give off remarkably little heat. You can touch an LED without any fear of being burned. In short, LEDs are fucking cool. But we're just seeing the beginning of what's possible with LEDs. While you can already get LED replacement bulbs for standard light fixtures, current bulbs have some drawbacks. That may be changing soon.

"An accidental discovery at Vanderbilt University may well be the key to making light-emitting diodes the dominant lighting technology of the century. Up until very recently, the only way to make "white" light was to add yellow phosphors to bright blue LEDs. It wasn't quite right, though, as even the best "white" LED retained a blue tint. This week, we got the news that a chemistry grad student at Vanderbilt has stumbled on a way to make broad-spectrum white LEDs using quantum dots -- and in doing so, he may well have kicked off a revolution."

To understand the importance of this discovery, you have to understand the possibilities of LEDs. If you've got four 100 Watt light bulbs on in your house, you're using as much electricity as a typical refrigerator at it's maximum usage. To get the same amount of light out of LEDs, you'd only have to use a little more electricity than a typical clock radio. If a million households changed all of their incandescent bulbs to LEDs, the total savings could be as much as $18 million a year. The resulting drop in electricity production could save 230,000 tons of coal and 360 million gallons of water, and it could reduce sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions by 2,000 tons each, and emissions of carbon dioxide by 600,000 tons. That's not even counting the savings for commercial applications of LEDs vs. incandescent bulbs (or even fluorescent bulbs), which could be substantially greater. Making wider-spectrum, true white LEDs would mean making LEDs more pleasing to people for everyday use, and as they gain in popularity, the price would drop substantially, to the point where the electricity savings would offset any cost difference within a matter of days, instead of months.

Saying the discovery may have kicked off a revolution might be a bit premature, but it's really not that much of an overstatement.

Hat Tip: SG

Serendipity. It's a beautiful thing. Of course these things would be amazing and save tons of energy and money, it would be great if everyone used them. But I fear this will be the same case with gasoline alternatives- they take a long time to catch on. People don't want to change everything right away, especially when they have to spend a lot up front, regardless of how much they will save in the long haul. We'll see how this plays out once everyone has heard about it.

I doubt they will take too long to catch on with the masses. As stated, LEDs are used in damn near everything already. given the fact that this is not exactly new technology, just an expansion of existing tech, the initial cost isnt going to be absurd as it is with most new stuff. Of course there will be a cost invilved with changing fixtures and that sort of thing and of course it will take some time for stores to start carrying LED ready lamps and the sort, but I dont expect the delay to be too great. Other items that rely on LEDs are becoming very popular these days. Watches, clocks, odd little posters, all sorts of stuff. People seem to be into it. Not to mention they are starting to use them on cars as well. I think the biggest delay will be in initial production of the product. After that, they will be flying off the shelves.

I've seen them used in a lot of traffic lights- they are kind of expensive in those, so they don't always put LED's in all three lights. They start with the red, because if green and yellow go out, you're still fine, but if there's no red, we're all screwed.

I really hope the white LED's catch on, though. It would save everyone a lot of money.

I love LED's

What's really cool is that LED's can make infra red light, none visible infar red light.

Meaning, if you have a sensitive photolens you can use an InfraRed LED flashlight for that photolens and basically have yourself some home made Night Vision.

I've done this with one of my webcams and it works pretty well, except I can't get my hands on some IRLED's which is too bad :(.

Also, LED's can create light which emits the same sort of radiation that makes your skin create vitamins.

The sun is the only thing that can give off that kind of light other than LED's, they already use them for medical applications and for people with skin dissorders like me. (psoriosis)

LED's however wont be a big boom for a while because there are too many major companies making more money on standard lighting sources.

The consumers would save milliions, but to a commercial business, that equals losing millions, and putting some out of business or bankrupt.

That's the same reason (as stated earlier) that gasoline alternatives aren't being properly exploited.

It's all because of money hungry bastards who don't care about pollution reductions or consuming resources to their brink.