Scientists at the Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials at Wake Forest University in North Carolina have found a lighting solution that is equivalent to LEDs and more efficient than compact fluorescent (CFL) bulbs. And, thankfully, it produces more pleasant light than either. Gone, too, is the annoying buzz of the fluorescent light that has universally annoyed officer workers everywhere.
The new lighting is based on field-induced polymer electroluminescent (FIPEL) technology. Instead of producing the harsh yellow light of fluorescent bulbs or the standard LED blue tint, the FIPEL technology produces bulbs that emit a soft white light.
A nano-engineered polymer matrix to convert the FIPELs charge into light. This creates an entirely new type of light bulb not based on anything previously invented. The details of this creation are described in the journal Organic Electronics.
David Carroll, the leader of the lighting breakthrough, and his group are the first to create a large-scale FIPEL that has the potential to replace corporate lighting. Carroll and his team also envision a world where display lighting, marquees, and subway cars, to name a few, use FIPELs.
Lifespan is not an issue for FIPELs. The Wake Forest team has a FIPEL that has worked consistently for ten years, making the light not only pleasant but cost effective.
In the hopes of making their lighting solution ubiquitous, Wake Forest is working with a company to mass produce the technology to distribute to consumers in 2013.
Excellent innovative piece of research. http://schnap.com.au whose representative I am wants to know when this new type of bulb would hit the market.
Interesting-what’feild’ supplies the stimulation?If hf radio frequeuncies-then congradulations on the plastic copy of Tesla’s-‘carbon button lamp’.Only a hundred years behind!
I find flouros and led too be fraught in quality and specs,often.But the main limits are the idiots who use them.I can crank out a lot more usable light with less waste of the flux than most of the proffessionals whose jobs this is supposed too be.This is in the actual world as important as not letting mafias throttle gains in lumens per watt or costs.These end use improvements whip back up the power supply chain (gen,storage,lines ect)at an expotental rate.And then allow more choices-when these are made judiciously(which has being known too happen-abeit rarely),all can gain and partake-see:Buckminister Fuller-Ephermanization, and livingry.
Cheers-Todd Millions
Hello Ms. Kim,
I am a little relieved to see that there are not many people reading this post, as its characterizations of LED lighting are completely false. I am excited to hear about the new FIPEL technology, but rather than explaining it in more detail you chose to describe other technologies. LED lighting is widely available now in many color temperatures from a very warm (and almost amber) 2400K to many shades of white all the way through the blueish spectrum around 6500K. I have taken many ordinary people into a local restaurant that is lit 100% with LED lighting and they had no idea. They were very pleasantly surprised that the warm, inviting atmosphere was also created with efficient, green LED lighting. It is hard enough to get people to try new technologies without “journalists” such as yourself misleading people with false information that you no doubt learned from yet another “journalist” rather than your own first hand experience.