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Light bulbs go wireless

23.07.2004

Rapidly penetrating into our lives, wireless devices for various purposes have reached the most conservative strongholds of "wired" technologies - in particular, electric lighting.

According to a press release from the American nuclear research laboratory Sandia National Laboratories, wireless light sources based on nanocrystals have been developed in the United States, which in the future can replace incandescent lamps or fluorescent lights that are familiar to us. In addition to the absence of electrical wires, the new lamps have another advantage - very high efficiency. The wireless light sources were developed as part of a joint project between Los Alamos National Laboratories and Sandia Laboratories. The emitting elements in them are nanocrystals.

Semiconductor structures known as "quantum wells" are used as energy sources. Their ultraviolet radiation is effectively absorbed by nanocrystals, after which it is re-emitted in the visible range. It has been experimentally shown that the structure of nanocrystals begins to emit light, being in close proximity to the energy source.

Such a mechanism has a number of attractive advantages. In particular, the wavelength of light emitted by nanocrystals is determined to a greater extent by the geometric parameters of the structures, rather than by the properties of the materials used, which makes it easy to obtain sources of a certain color (for example, red, blue, green), or, by combining them, to obtain a white color. The "quantum well" used in the experiments carried out by American scientists is a film about three nanometers thick of indium gallium nitride deposited on a substrate two inches in diameter. The structure of the energy levels allows the "quantum well" to radiate in the ultraviolet range (wavelength about 400 nm).

The "quantum well" itself was created in Sandia Laboratories by chemist Daniel Koleske. The assembly of the experimental setup and the conduct of experiments, as well as the development of the theory, were carried out by scientists at the Los Alamos Laboratory. In our experiment, the "quantum well" was pumped with energy using a laser. Replacing the laser with a more convenient electric current is fraught with significant difficulties, but scientists believe that this problem is quite solvable.

Already in the first experiments, the energy transfer efficiency was 55%. Scientists believe that in the future this figure may increase significantly, almost up to 100%. The development of highly efficient light sources is one of the priority tasks of modern semiconductor electronics: today, lighting devices are the main consumer of electricity generated in the world.

The most promising direction in this area is the creation of superbright LEDs. Similar devices have already appeared on the market - in particular, the Italian company Rimsa has developed a lamp for operating rooms PentalLED, which gives an absolutely "cold" light. It uses Luxeon V LEDs, capable of delivering 120 lumens of light output and with a lifetime that is twenty-five times longer than the halogens currently in use.

The development of efficient "wireless" light sources based on nanostructures will undoubtedly significantly expand the range of applications of new technologies.

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