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LEDs that Burn 10 Times Brighter [View all]
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.
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[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.
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