Natural light to reinvent bulbs (BBC)

[eppur_se_muova]

The organic light-emitting diode (OLED) emits a brilliant white light when attached to an electricity supply.

The material, described in the journal Nature, can be printed in wafer thin sheets that could transform walls, ceilings or even furniture into lights.

The OLEDs do not heat up like today's light bulbs and so are far more energy efficient and should last longer.
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Today, more than 20% of electricity used in US buildings is eaten up by lights and nearly half that amount is used by traditional, incandescent light bulbs.
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more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4906188.stm

*SIGH* This "natural' light source is an ARTIFICIAL polymer. Another reporter confused by the term 'organic', which, to a chemist, only signifies a carbon-containing compound, not a natural one.

[Igel]

1. Really.

Yesterday I saw a package of sugar--just plain old sucrose--labelled "organic sugar" in a store.

The inferred contrasts with "inorganic sugar" and the probably preternaturally expensive "artificial sugar" left me slack-jawed for a minute. I have to assume it meant 'only partially refined', but I couldn't check. I had to chase after a 2-year-old who was not properly flabbergasted into immobility.

[benburch]

3. Inorganic sugar...

Lead.

[Salviati]

4. Mmmmm lead....

Tastes so sweet, but it makes my thinky thing not...work...good....

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. Or it might mean "grown organically"

without pesticides, using only allowed categories of fertiliser, etc. Rather like 'organic' everything else you find in food stores. It's a usgae of the term that's been around for a long time.

[phantom power]

2. I don't know what it's like elsewhere, but American science reporting...

is abysmal. Aside from the bit where they get often get stuff wrong, or needlessly oversimplify, there seems to be some unwritten rule that you must work in a gratuitous Star Trek reference, or bad pun, or both, at every possible opportunity.

"See, these OLEDs are just like the lights on the bridge of the Star Trek Enterprise, except they're not."

[scubadude]

5. The term "Natural" is being used here in a different sense.

Most LED's create monochromatic light, or light of one color. When one refers to "natural" in regard to led technology what one is referring to is the ability to create multi-chromatic light, or "white light" that contains all colors. Recently LED's with this ability have been invented but they lack in brightness, create heat, and are expensive to make. The article is indeed hopeful.

Scuba

[Tesha]

7. I didn't think there are any broad-spectrum LEDs yet.

> ..."white light" that contains all colors. Recently LED's with
> this ability have been invented but they lack in brightness,
> create heat, and are expensive to make.

I didn't think there were any true "broad spectrum" LEDs yet.
The LEDs we call "white" LEDs fall into three categories:

o They use separate emitters for several primary colors
(commonly, red, green, and blue),

o They emit bluish light and use a yellow scintillator
layer in front to convert some of the blue light to
yellow light, or

o They emit ultraviolet light and use phosphors in the
exact same way as fluorescent lamps.


Are you aware of any direct-radiating broad-spectrum LEDs?

Tesha