Efficiency is one of the largest pursuits of the modern world. How can we make things take less power? How can we use less of the resources which we have limited amounts of, such as coal or other fuels?
One of the largest pursuits of efficiency has been light. How can you light up an area while using the least power that you can? For the longest time, the answer to this simple question has been the LED design of light. While they give out a different color of light compared to other types, these still have been the most power-friendly option for businesses and homeowners alike to pursue if the main worry was how much power these things would be taking up in day-to-day use.
Recently at Princeton University, researchers have developed a new method to actually increase the brightness, efficiency and clarity of these LED light bulbs, which are becoming increasingly common in standard lighting besides the smartphones and other portable electronics which they all are in right now.
This method is able to improve the picture clarity of LED displays by 400 percent, compared to approaches which are in widespread use currently.
Some people may ask what an LED is in the first place? An LED, or light emitting diode is an electronically device that emits light when electrical current moves through two terminals. Current LEDs have design challenges; the largest among these is the issue of light getting trapped inside of the LED structure without escaping. While being known for being efficient already, only a small amount of what is being generated is what you actually see when you look at the bulb from an external point of view.
Princeton has been working on using other methods and internal mechanisms for the same structure, producing slightly different results all the time. In the future, we may be seeing some rather interesting development of both brighter, and more clear types of lighting being made available for the public. Potentially making the higher brightness products in existence right now significantly cheaper due to the new discoveries.
