The speed at which LED lumen output is increasing is staggering. Bridgelux has just released an LED with 135 lumen/W. They were able to get commercial grade performance from a silicon substrate LED for the first time in the industry. A single 1.5mm diameter LED operated at 350mA has output 135 lumens (4730K) at 2.9V. In the industry silicon carbide and sapphire substrates used to create epitaxial wafer, but the materials and process are expensive. Bridgelux went with low cost gallium nitride, grown, wafers from 150 - 300 mm diameters, with a 75% reduction in cost, in comparison.

The Bridgelux CEO, Bill Watkins, has this to say about the tech, "The significantly reduced cost-structures enabled by Silicon-based LED technology will continue to deliver dramatic reductions in the up-front capital investment required for solid state lighting. In as little as two to three years, even the most price-sensitive markets, such as commercial and office lighting, residential applications, and retrofit lamps will seamlessly and rapidly convert to solid state lighting.”

We will see these emerge in 2-3 years.

Eavesdropper

Those light-emitting diodes marketed as safe, environmentally preferable alternatives to traditional lightbulbs actually contain lead, arsenic and a dozen other potentially hazardous substances, according to newly published research. “LEDs are touted as the next generation of lighting. But as we try to find better products that do not deplete energy resources or contribute to global warming, we have to be vigilant about the toxicity hazards of those marketed as replacements,” explained Oladele Ogunseitan, chair of UC Irvine's Department of Population Health & Disease Prevention. He and fellow scientists at UCI and UC Davis crunched, leached and measured the tiny, multicolored lightbulbs sold in Christmas strands; red, yellow and green traffic lights; and automobile headlights (non-flaming) and brake lights. Their findings? Low-intensity red lights contained up to eight times the amount of lead allowed under California law, but in general, high-intensity, brighter bulbs had more contaminants than lower ones. White bulbs had the least lead, but contained high amounts of nickel. Lead, arsenic and many additional metals discovered in the bulbs or their related parts have been linked in hundreds of studies to different cancers, neurological damage, kidney disease, hypertension, skin rashes and other illnesses. The copper used in some LEDs also poses an ecological threat to fish, rivers and lakes.

Risks are present in all parts of the lights and at every stage during production, use and disposal, the study found. Consumers, manufacturers and first responders to accident scenes ought to be aware of this, Ogunseitan said. When bulbs break at home, residents should sweep them up with a special broom while wearing gloves and a mask, he advised. Crews dispatched to clean up car crashes or broken traffic fixtures should don protective gear and handle the material as hazardous waste. Currently, LEDs are not classified as toxic and are disposed of in regular landfills. Ogunseitan has forwarded the study results to California and federal health regulators. He cites LEDs as a perfect example of the need to mandate product replacement testing. The diodes are widely hailed as safer than compact fluorescent bulbs, which contain dangerous mercury. But, he said, they weren't properly tested before being marketed as the preferred alternative to inefficient incandescent bulbs, now being phased out under California law. Ogunseitan continued, “I'm frustrated, but the work continues. Every day we don't have a law that says you cannot replace an unsafe product with another unsafe product; we're putting people's lives at risk. And it's a preventable risk."

Eavesdropper

For a team of technology whiz kids at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, having a 3-D theater to work in just wasn’t enough. Using the curved 33-by-9-foot 3-D screen, a group there has created a touchscreen capable of more than 100 points of simultaneous contact. To create their super-sized touch panel, the team converted the 3-millimeter dark acrylic screen panel into a touch screen by backlighting it with six full HD projectors. The rest of the hardware isn’t particularly high-tech; to create the touch sensitivity they used six Optitrack cameras, 16 inexpensive infrared emitters, and 1,000 LEDs. Three computers (described by the team as ‘old’) are connected to the cameras (two cameras per computer) and feed data to the visualization system running on a fourth computer. Even with the old computers, they have enough processing power to detect 100 points of contact simultaneously with no delay. More points of touch are possible but the program starts to slow at that point, a problem that seems like it could be fixed with some better hardware.

Eavesdropper

Microscopically small nanostructured arrays of lenses that can record or project amazingly sharp images in brilliant colors are being demonstrated by Fraunhofer research scientists at the upcoming nano tech 2011 trade show in Tokyo. The image illuminating the wall of the Fraunhofer exhibition stand at the trade show will be produced by a luminous cube. The prototype of the new projector consists of an optical system just eleven millimeters square and three millimeters thick through which a powerful LED lamp shines. The images are amazingly sharp, the colors brilliant, all thanks to micro and nanotechnology. “The special thing about the new projection technology is that the image is already integrated in the microoptics. The pixels measuring just a hundred nanometers or so are stored in a chromium layer under the lens array. Such a microarray has around 250 microlenses, and under each lens there is a microimage. When all of them are projected onto the wall together, a high-quality complete image is produced from an extremely small projector,” say’s Marcel Sieler, physicist at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering IOF in Jena. The IOF scientists have also developed a projector that is not much bigger than a box of matches. It can project presentations, video clips and movies from a cell phone or laptop onto any wall – at home, in the office or out and about. Ultra-flat cameras that are ideal for area or production monitoring in exposed locations are another application which will be demonstrated in Tokyo.

Eavesdropper

The ‘Aurora in a Box’ which recreates the physics involved in the creation of the Northern Lights or Aurora Borealis, will be used to demonstrate how electrically charged particles in the atmosphere create the spectacle seen at the earth’s poles. Dr. Wild, a Physicist studying the space environment and the links between the Sun, the Earth and other planets, was awarded a grant from Research Councils UK to create the outreach tool to explain the research to non-specialist audiences. Dr Wild uses the model to help him explain his research to children in schools, at university events and at national science events. “For a start it’s just really interesting science, but it also has very practical uses. We use a lot of technology in space, like communications and positioning satellites, and those satellites are sometimes outside the protection of the Earth’s magnetic field. They’re therefore more vulnerable to changes in space weather and can be damaged or have their services disrupted. Being able to predict this would be very useful,” said Dr. Wild. The Aurora in a Box consists of glass tubes full of gas through which electrons move, causing the gas to fluoresce exactly as it does at the Earth’s poles. Auroras are linked to the solar wind, a flow of ions and electrons continuously flowing outward from the Sun. The Earth's magnetic field traps these particles, most of which travel toward the poles where they are accelerated towards the Earth. Collisions between these particles, and atmospheric atoms and molecules, causes energy releases in the form of streams or arches of colored light.

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