New LED Tech May Bring More Natural Light and Less Power Consumption in Just 5 Years

Have you switched to LED lighting solutions in your house to cut down on power consumption? If not, you may be doing in the near future. Scientists from the Niels Bohr Institute discovered a new way of making LEDs with the use of nanowires, bringing a more natural light and less power consumption than the LEDs we have on the market.

So what are these nanowires? They seem to be very small pieces of wire with sizes of about 2 micrometers in height and 10 to 500 nanometers in diameter. The researchers used a special nanoscale X-ray technique to test out the wires in Hamburg, Germany, without destroying them in the process. The result helped them find what type of nanowires they can use to make these future LEDs.

“We measured 20 nanowires and when we saw the images, we were very surprised because you could clearly see the details of each nanowire. You can see the structure of both the inner core and the outer layer. If there are defects in the structure or if they are slightly bent, they do not function as well. So we can identify exactly which nanowires are the best and have the most efficient core/shell structure,” explains Tomas Stankevic, a PhD student in the research group ‘Neutron and X-ray Scattering’ at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.

This information is said to be useful in making the perfect adjustments for future nanowires. The scientists believe that future LEDs made out of the latter nanowires will bring more natural light and less power consumption, so we will be able to see better and more energy-efficient LED displays for smartphones, TVs and even light bulbs. Also, the scientists are so optimistic about this technique that they believe the new LED technology will be available on the market within five years.

Thank you Phys.org for providing us with this information

Image courtesy of BrightLux