LED lights & fluorescents obsolete in 2013....

[Phil]

[Huge]

Ubiquitous? Yes. Popular? No.

And I thought electroluminous materials were old hat? I have a nightlight that uses them, although the light is a ghastly blue-green colour.

[polygonum]

Plastic bulb promises truer light

It looks like dumbing down of the original "polymer" - after all, the lamp could easily be made with a glass sheet - or possibly tube - in its construction. And there seems to be no bulb-like quality (i.e. glass envelope) to warrant that term.

[Dave Liquorice]

Last para does say he has had one working for 10 years in his lab... I guess those ten years have been spent getting the light output up from a dim glow and the colour sensible.

[Brian Gaff]

Is this these light emitting panels thingys? I understand that at present they are not cheap, very bright or long lived, which seems to me to be a bit of a problem.

Brian

[Brian Gaff]

Yes those lights wer awful, and there were also some that used to glow a naff shade of orange as well I seem to recall. Brian

[Brian Gaff]

So when will we get light emitting wallpaper? Brian

[F Murtz]

How come you all seem to get a page from this url when it does not work for me?

[jgharston]

That's ok then, the fluorescent lamps I've just bought are twin helixes, not bulbs.

JGH

[John Rumm]

It says:

US researchers say they have developed a new type of lighting that could replace fluorescent bulbs.

The new source is made from layers of plastic and is said to be more efficient while producing a better quality of flicker-free light.

The scientists behind it say they believe the first units will be produced in 2013.

Details of the new development have been published in the journal Organic Electronics. Continue reading the main story ?Start Quote

What we've found is a way of creating light rather than heat?

Prof David Carroll Wake Forest University Brighter white

The new light source is called field-induced polymer electroluminescent (Fipel) technology. It is made from three layers of white-emitting polymer that contain a small volume of nanomaterials that glow when electric current is passed through them.

The inventor of the device is Dr David Carroll, professor of physics at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. He says the new plastic lighting source can be made into any shape, and it produces a better quality of light than compact fluorescent bulbs which have become very popular in recent years.

"They have a bluish, harsh tint to them, " he told BBC News, "it is not really accommodating to the human eye; people complain of headaches and the reason is the spectral content of that light doesn't match the Sun - our device can match the solar spectrum perfectly.

"I'm saying we are brighter than one of these curly cube bulbs and I can give you any tint to that white light that you want." Continue reading the main story Lighting up the world

There have been several attempts to develop new light-bulbs in recent years - Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) have come a long way since they were best known for being indicator lights in electronic devices. Over the past decade, they have become much more widely used as a light source as they are both bright and efficient. They are now often used on large buildings. Light not heat

Another step forward has been organic LEDs (OLEDs) which also promise greater efficiency and better light than older, incandescent bulbs. Their big advantage over LEDs is that they can be transformed into many different shapes including the screens for high-definition televisions.

But Prof Carroll believes OLED lights haven't lived up to the hype.

"They don't last very long and they're not very bright," he said. "There's a limit to how much brightness you can get out of them. If you run too much current through them they melt."

The Fipel bulb, he says, overcomes all these problems.

"What we've found is a way of creating light rather than heat. Our devices contain no mercury, they contain no caustic chemicals and they don't break as they are not made of glass."

Prof Carroll says his new bulb is cheap to make and he has a "corporate partner" interested in manufacturing the device. He believes the first production runs will take place in 2013.

He also has great faith in the ability of the new bulbs to last. He says he has one in his lab that has been working for about a decade.

[F Murtz]

Thanks, interesting. Dont know why some people are getting 404 messages on that url though.