Currently LED’s are manufactured with costly materials such as sapphire or silicon carbide, and currently many companies are trying to scale those materials in order to drive down the costs, but the public is still sitting at $30-40 a bulb.  At that cost it takes a few years, considering you don’t break a bulb, to break even.

This week, Bridgelux said it used eight-inch silicon wafers to make components that achieved 135 lumens per watt.  This means they have reached commercial-grade performance with silicon for the first time. It will take a few years to improve production to make the process more streamlined and commercially viable, but Bridgelux anticipates a reduction of costs by 75%.

Bill Watkins, Bridgelux’s CEO says, “This is a game-changer around the whole cost structure,” Watkins says. “We think we can get to $5 bulbs.”

CFL’s are the cheap alternative, and I don’t mean Canadian Football League.  They are relatively inexpensive, and have a good bulb lifespan at between 6,000 to 15,000 hours.  However, it produces a poor light quality, takes time to warm up, and is not fully dimmable, but the real detractor is that it contains mercury.

LED’s are thought to be the future of bulbs.  They have a longer bulb life at between 25,000 -100,000 hours, there are no harmful components to led bulbs, and are nearly indestructible under normal usage, but there are some problems here as well.  LED’s are very directional in lighting, they get very hot when used in higher output (which is why the bulbs look funny w/ the heat sinks on the back), and they are really expensive.

Enter ESL (electron stimulated luminescence) light bulbs by the Vue1 Corporation.  They get approximately the same life as a CFL, but much better light quality and more importantly, no mercury.  They don’t have the life span of an LED, but the quality of light is more akin to a traditional incandescent.  It is about half the cost of an LED and illuminates space better.  Watch the video for the full details.  This is making my brain tingle.  Edison would be proud.

via engadget

“Imagine if your computer, iPhone, TV, radio and thermostat could all communicate with you when you walked in a room just by flipping the wall light switch and without the usual cluster of wires,” said BU Engineering Professor Thomas Little. “This could be done with an LED-based communications network that also provides light – all over existing power lines with low power consumption, high reliability and no electromagnetic interference. Ultimately, the system is expected to be applicable from existing illumination devices, like swapping light bulbs for LEDs.”

Boston University researches will focus on developing computer networking applications, notably the solid state optical technology that will form the network’s backbone.

“This is a unique opportunity to create a transcendent technology that not only enables energy efficient lighting, but also creates the next generation of secure wireless communications,” Little added. “As we switch from incandescent and compact florescent lighting to LEDs in the coming years, we can simultaneously build a faster and more secure communications infrastructure at a modest cost along with new and unexpected applications.”

Little envisions indoor optical wireless communications systems that use white LED lighting within a room – akin to the television remote control device – to provide Internet connections to computers, personal digital assistants, television and radio reception, telephone connections and thermostat temperature control.

With widespread LED lighting, a vast network of light-based communication is possible, Little noted. A wireless device within sight of an enabled LED could send and receive data though the air – initially at speeds in the 1 to 10 megabit per second range – with each LED serving as an access point to the network. Such a network would have the potential to offer users greater bandwidth than current RF technology.

Moreover, since this white light does not penetrate opaque surfaces such as walls, there is a higher level of security, as eavesdropping is not possible. LED lights also consume far less energy than RF technology, offering the opportunity to build a communication network without added energy costs and reducing carbon emissions over the long term.

The ability to rapidly turn LED lights on and off – so fast the change is imperceptible to the human eye – is key to the technology. Flickering light in patterns enables data transmission without any noticeable change in room lighting. And the technology is not limited to indoor lights; its first real test may very well come outdoors, in the automotive industry.

via cellular-news

The company hopes to use the technology to commercialize as early as 2010 LED lighting capable of replacing fluorescent lighting.

Today’s UV LEDs are not efficient enough for use in white LEDs, so such devices are now made by coating phosphors on a blue LED. However, because the red color component is weak, red objects look dark when illuminated under these kinds of white LEDs.

As a result, currently available white LEDs are not suited for lighting places like supermarkets and clothing stores.

Toshiba increased the efficiency of its UV LED by placing a thin layer of aluminum nitride between the sapphire substrate and the light-emitting layer of gallium nitride. This reduces boundary defects more than tenfold and helps prevent fissures that lower efficiency.

Toshiba’s prototype LED emits UV light in wavelengths of 383 nanometers. At a current of 20 milliamperes, the device emits light with a brightness of 23 milliwatts, compared with a maximum of 15 milliwatts for conventional UV LEDs.

Coated with green, red and blue phosphors, the UV LED generates white light.

via tradingmarkets

Well, a company called Lemnis Lighting has come out with an LED bulb that only uses 5 watts of power comared to a CFL that uses 8 and a incandescent using 43. It is agreed that the future of lighting is probably with the LED lights, but until the price of these bulbs goes down, it will have a hard time gaining traction in the general public as the lights are $40 a piece.