Rare-Earth Europium Nanocrystals Never Seen Before Could Revolutionize Huge LED Market

Mark Hoffman

Newly discovered minuscule nanocrystals that glow different colors may be the missing ingredient for white LED lighting that illuminates homes and offices as effectively as natural sunlight, and thus provide a boost to this already surging sector.

Light-emitting diodes, better known as LEDs, offer substantial energy savings over incandescent and fluorescent lights and are easily produced in single colors such as red or green commonly used in traffic lights or children's toys.

Developing an LED that emits a broad spectrum of warm white light on par with sunlight has proven tricky, however. LEDs, which produce light by passing electrons through a semiconductor material, often are coupled with materials called phosphors that glow when excited by radiation from the LED.

"But it's hard to get one phosphor that makes the broad range of colors needed to replicate the sun," said John Budai, a scientist in ORNL's Materials Science and Technology division. "One approach to generating warm-white light is to hit a mixture of phosphors with ultraviolet radiation from an LED to stimulate many colors needed for white light."

Budai is working with a team of scientists from University of Georgia and Oak Ridge and Argonne national laboratories to understand a new group of crystals that might yield the right blend of colors for white LEDs as well as other uses. Zhengwei Pan's group at UGA grew the nanocrystals using europium oxide and aluminum oxide powders as the source materials because the rare-earth element europium is known to be a dopant, or additive, with good phosphorescent properties.

"What's amazing about these compounds is that they glow in lots of different colors—some are orange, purple, green or yellow," Budai said. "The next question became: why are they different colors? It turns out that the atomic structures are very different."

Budai has been studying the atomic structure of the materials using x-rays from Argonne's Advanced Photon Source. Two of the three types of crystal structures in the group of phosphors had never been seen before, which can probably be attributed to the crystals' small size, Budai said.

"Only the green ones were a known crystal structure," Budai said. "The other two, the yellow and blue, don't grow in big crystals; they only grow with these atomic arrangements in these tiny nanocrystals. That's why they have different photoluminescent properties."

X-ray diffraction analysis is helping Budai and his collaborators work out how the atoms are arranged in each of the different crystal types. The different-colored phosphors exhibit distinct diffraction patterns when they are hit with x-rays, enabling researchers to analyze the crystal structure.

"What that means in terms of how the electrons around the atoms interact to make light is much harder," Budai said. "We haven't completely solved that yet. That's the continuing research. We have a lot of clues, but we don't know everything."

The knowledge gained through their atomic-scale analysis is helping the research team improve the phosphorescent crystals. Different factors in the growth process—temperature, powder composition, and types of gas used—can change the final product. A fundamental understanding of all the parameters could help the team to perfect the recipe and improve the crystals' ability to convert energy into light.

Advancing the material's luminescence efficiency is key to making it useful for commercial LED products and other applications; the new nanocrystals may turn out to have other practical photonic uses beyond phosphors for LEDs. Their ability to act as miniature "light pipes" when the crystal quality is high enough could lend them to applications in fiber-optic technologies, Budai said.

"You can keep growing the crystals and measuring them, or you can understand why it's doing what it's doing, and figure out how to make it better. That's what we're doing—basic research. We have to figure out nature first."

The team's most recent study is published as the inside front cover article in the April 25 issue of Advanced Functional Materials as "New Ternary Europium Aluminate Luminescent Nanoribbons for Advanced Photonics."

(Photo : Los Alamos National Laboratory)
Embedding nanocrystals in glass provides a way to create UV-producing LEDs for biomedical applications.

Budai and use of the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne were supported by DOE's Office of Science. Zhengwai Pan was funded by the National Science Foundation.

The Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory is one of five national synchrotron radiation light sources supported by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science to carry out applied and basic research to understand, predict, and ultimately control matter and energy at the electronic, atomic, and molecular levels, provide the foundations for new energy technologies, and support DOE missions in energy, environment, and national security. To learn more about the Office of Science X-ray user facilities, visithttp://science.energy.gov/user-facilities/basic-energy-sciences/.

DOE's Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. -- Courtesy of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy.

Read more at: http://www.scienceworldreport.com/articles/7204/20130530/rare-earth-europium-nanocrystals-never-seen-before-revolutionize-led-industry.htm

New Kind of LED Could Mean Better Google-Glass-Like Displays

Micro-display LED tech could light up the next generation of face-wearable gadgets.
By Rachel Metz


Blue chip: Lumiode tests out a blue LED.

A tiny head-mounted display, like the one in Google Glass, will only be useful if you can see on-screen alerts and information clearly. And that’s tricky to achieve, especially without draining battery life—as Google notes, it can be hard to use Glass’s projected display in bright sunlight.

A Brooklyn-based startup called Lumiode is working on one possible solution. Unlike most displays, which have a light-emitting backplane and use filters to make the individual color pixels that collectively form images, Lumiode’s technology uses the light-emitting diodes as the pixels. They are more efficient because no light is lost through filtering. The result, says founder and CEO Vincent Lee, will be tinier, brighter, more energy-efficient head-mounted displays and projectors. And while it will be some time before the company’s technology is ready for a Google Glass-like product, growing interest in ever-smaller electronic displays that fit in with our daily lives could spur demand.

Most displays—such as LCD monitors or smartphone screens—use LEDs for the light source at the back of the screen. In such screens, images are created as light passes through filters. The drawback is that this reduces overall brightness and means that the LEDs are always on, which wastes energy.

Lumiode, which spun out of Lee’s graduate work at Columbia University’s Columbia Laboratory for Unconventional Electronics, takes a different tack. The company patterns LED into arrays, adding a layer of silicon on top of each individual LED that controls the amount of light it emits. In this way the LED itself serves as the component that forms an image. “What we’re doing is, we’re patterning LED wafers directly, and making the image component directly in the LED material, rather than using it as a backlight,” Lee says.

Lee says the Lumiode display isn’t very expensive to make, since it uses standard components and processing techniques. The company believes its technology is 30 times brighter and 10 times more efficient than other display technologies.

Officially formed in September, Lumiode is still in the early stages—the company’s latest prototype is about one millimeter square and contains 50 by 50 LEDs of a single color; additional colors will likely be created by adding a special layer on top of the chip. But Lee expects to make a 320-by-240-pixel prototype in about a year, and hopes to then partner with electronics makers to incorporate the technology into future devices. In addition to head-mounted displays, he can envision Lumiode’s technology being used to project information onto the windshield of a car.

Lumiode is exploring other potential uses for its technology. Combining Lumiode with infrared or ultraviolet LEDs, for example, could lead to improved 3-D scanning and printing.

Read more at: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/514651/new-kind-of-led-could-mean-better-google-glass-like-displays/

MEET THE TECH DUO THAT'S REVITALIZING THE MEDICAL DEVICE INDUSTRY

BY: JON GERTNER

Howard Levin, near right, and Mark Gelfand are revolutionizing the treatment of chronic diseases with devices inspired by long-abandoned surgical techniques.

On a February afternoon at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in northern Manhattan, the operating room has been filling for half an hour with a steady trickle of surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses, medical researchers, and a few curious observers.

Some are here to help, others to witness something they have never seen before. The patient is heavily sedated but still awake; an LED screen suspended above the operating table displays the vital signs. Normal blood pressure is anything below 120 over 80. This patient's reading is 270 over 110. The astronomical numbers are why everyone has come today--to see whether chronic hypertension that drugs aren't helping will respond to a radical new procedure.

Ajay Kirtane, an interventional cardiologist and head of the surgical team, begins with a small incision near the patient's groin. He inserts a short, hollow sheath, his gloved hands speckling with blood. He then methodically threads a catheter--a long plastic tube--into the artery and, guided by a scan on an overhead display, to the blood vessels leading to the kidneys, which on the screen resemble giant gray beans. So far the procedure is a lot like any catheterization--complex yet utterly routine. The team pauses, however, while an assistant opens a 4-foot-long orange and white cardboard box marked with the word "symplicity" and removes what looks like a motorcycle throttle with an electrical cord at one end and a 3-foot-long wire on the other. He plugs the electrical cord into a generator and Kirtane threads the wire through the catheter till it reaches the kidneys. The assistant activates the generator. The patient doesn't flinch as an energy burst destroys a swath of the renal nerves. For the next 20 minutes, Kirtane manipulates the wire, wiping out various sets of nerves. Toward the end, he turns around and says, modestly, "That's all there is to it."

But in truth there is much more to it than that.

---

In the spring of 2003, Howard Levin and Mark Gelfand were just a couple of frustrated entrepreneurs banging around Silicon Valley, looking to sell a stake in an idea for the device that would become Symplicity. Over and over again, they made the rounds of the venture capital firms on Sand Hill Road, where they gave earnest but futile presentations to potential funders. With each passing month, they became more demoralized. Some VCs dismissed their idea as stupid, or crazy. Some thought it intriguing but too risky. All had a reason to say no. Gelfand recalls, "Everyone and their grandmother pissed on us."

They had expected a better reception. By the time they arrived in the Valley, the two men had already collaborated on several devices and had created several startups that either succeeded modestly or appeared to have real promise. One was a vest that could administer CPR to a patient in cardiac distress by automatically contracting and expanding; another was a blood-filtration device that alleviated symptoms of congestive heart failure. What's more, the potential pool of patients for their newest idea could be in the tens of millions. But you could see why the VCs had their doubts. For starters, the men didn't fit the Silicon Valley mold. Both were in their forties, well past the bloom of technological youth, and both were voluble New Yorkers. More to the point, their approach to medical innovation could kindly be described as audacious. They were pitching not just a new kind of machine but an entirely new kind of therapeutic treatment. In fact, their claims were tantamount to suggesting that rather than looking for the next miracle pill, the health care industry should be looking for the next miracle device. This stance cast them against the currents of medicine for the past half century. In an era when Big Pharma was spending billions on breakthrough products and patients would much rather take a pill than suffer a doctor's scalpel, why fund a device that sounded like a science experiment?

In the end, only one group of West Coast techies--a Menlo Park medical-device incubator known as the Foundry--was willing to bet on Levin and Gelfand's invention. Foundry CEO Hanson Gifford was intrigued by their research showing a relationship between the removal of renal nerves and improvements in cardiovascular health. In 2004, in exchange for a significant share of future profits, Gifford and his partners agreed to take over development of the project and set out to build, improve, and test a renal device. By 2007, the first human trials were starting to show that in some cases the new treatment might lower blood pressure far more than any single drug therapy could--and with few significant side effects. And these findings were the main reason Medtronic, the medical-device maker, bought the idea, now known as renal denervation, in 2011 for $800 million. It was the highest price ever paid for an early-stage medical-device technology.

At the moment, the treatment is being used in Europe on patients with drug-resistant hypertension and is in the midst of a large (and likely definitive) U.S. trial that includes New York-Presbyterian. Medtronic expects it to be on the market here within two years. Dr. Oz has already begun to blog about it. Until the trials are complete, the device elicits a wait-and-see caveat from most doctors. But in the half-dozen conversations I had with some of the country's leading cardiologists, a strain of barely contained excitement comes through, mainly because the preliminary results of the treatment are so astonishing, and the side effects so minimal, compared to new drug therapies. "You now have a technology that can potentially be done safely and reduce the blood pressure by 30, 40, 50 millimeters of mercury?" Mehdi Shishehbor, a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic, tells me. "That is just enormous."

Levin admits, only half-seriously: "We are now the most famous people you've never heard of." But then he adds, "People come to us and say, 'Was that just a fluke that you guys did that, or was it real?' And so the answer is--"

"Well, our answer is, we have a system," Gelfand says.

"Right," adds Levin. "We don't think it's a fluke. We think it's a function of how we do things, rather than, you know, did we just get lucky."

---

The device industry has the distinction of being both immensely important and exceedingly obscure. It is not a business that consumers can easily follow: Like the rest of us, the patient on Kirtane's operating table had little awareness of the innovations that now allow for catheterized tubes to be pushed through the bloodstream, let alone the origins of the experimental device. Still, I came to spend time with Levin and Gelfand because their medical work over the past decade promises to have more of an impact--a life-and-death impact, that is--than so much of the gadgetry that clogs the web with speculation, chatter, and tweets. At the same time, their innovative process helps explain how new ideas, rather than just new technology, can alter the future.

Read more at: http://www.fastcompany.com/3007845/meet-tech-duo-thats-revitalizing-medical-device-industry

Berlin company helps customers build bamboo bikes

Bamboo is known for its durability and high strength-to-weight ratio in construction, housing and furniture. A Berlin-based company is now using the natural material to help people build their own bikes.

As he saws through a long length of bamboo, Dan Vogel-Essex grins and explains why bamboo is perfect for making bicycle frames.

"Bamboo is an amazing material," he says. "In just about all aspects, it's like a steel frame - it's durable, it's fairly light. It's quite stiff, but really the property that just shines above all the rest is the comfort - the vibration absorbing qualities of it."

Vogel-Essex is a designer and one of the partners of Berlin-based Ozon Cyclery, which runs workshops for anyone interested in making their own bike from bamboo.

Over the past three years, he and partner Stefan Brüning have been refining their bamboo bike construction techniques.

In their small workspace, located in an old railway yard, long strands of bamboo lie on overhead racks. A dozen or so handmade bamboo bike frames are in various stages of construction. Saws, sandpaper and epoxy resins line the workbenches along with bolts of natural fiber cloth - the tools and materials for working with bamboo.

 

Cutting bamboo tubes to the correct length is easy

Brüning says their first bamboo bike barely made it out of their workshop before breaking.

"There was no way of how to do it available on the Internet or any place where you could learn how to build a bamboo bike. So we had to figure it out on our own," he says.

Today, the pair can build virtually any type of bicycle frame from bamboo - from mountain and touring bikes to racing bikes. Brüning says a typical bamboo frame weighs about 1.75 kilograms (3.7 pounds).

The wider, the better

Brüning and Vogel-Essex found that tiger bamboo is a good species for producing bike tubes. An adjustable jig is used to precisely set the geometry of the bamboo frame and can be similar to any other type of bike. However, Vogel-Essex and Brüning worked out that bamboo bike tubes need to have a diameter of 40 to 70 millimeters (1.5 to 2.7 inches) for the best performance.

Vogel-Essex says the diameter of bamboo tubes for bicycles has to be wider than standard steel tubes. "Of all the tests we've done and things that we've tried, the biggest problem with bamboo is that it tends to be flexible - which is also a benefit - and the super simple answer to making it stiff is diameter - it's got to be wide."

Designer Dan Vogel-Essex (left) shows workshop participants how to shape their bamboo frame

Joining the tubes together is perhaps the biggest challenge for a building a bamboo bike frame and manufacturers differ in their approach. Some wrap tubes together with strips of hemp soaked in epoxy resin, while others use steel joints. Bamboo draws its strength from the density of its outer and inner layers of fibers. So Vogel-Essex and Brüning looked to other industries such as aeronautics to develop a way of joining bamboo together using flax fiber composite materials.

"It's almost like we are learning from nature," Vogel-Essex says. "Nature makes tubing which is pretty much perfect already. We make the joint as good as the tubing itself."

It takes about 30 to 40 hours of work to produce a bicycle from bamboo. But what happens if you crash it? Will the bamboo break? Brüning says a bamboo tube might crack lengthways, but fixing it should be as simple as repairing a puncture.

"You can always ride a bike when the tube is broken." he explains. "You can repair cracks because you can just add some epoxy in between and can glue it together quite easily."

Preparing bamboo tubes before wrapping joins in natural fiber cloth

Build your own bamboo bike

Bicycle courier Marc Brockmann has been visiting the workshop on weekends to build his own bamboo bicycle. As someone who has to ride a bicycle the whole day there were many things that made bamboo attractive, he says.

"I'm not getting any younger and I think the comfort of the ride is better than an aluminum bike. I think there's more flexibility and absorption," Brockmann explains, noting that a lot of his bicycle courier colleagues are curious about his bamboo bike and want to ride it when it's finished.

There's a growing demand for bamboo bicycles around the world with small enterprises building frames in the US, Ghana, Zambia and Singapore. Vogel-Essex says he can see bamboo bicycles becoming more popular, but adds that bamboo is best suited to custom made bicycles rather than mass production. Both he and Brüning hope that their bamboo frame building techniques will be adopted by others.

"There's a saying, 'steel is real,'" says Vogel-Essex. "Everybody says steel is the material for the best ride quality. I actually want to make a bumper sticker that says, 'bamboo is realer!'"

Read more at: http://www.dw.de/berlin-company-helps-customers-build-bamboo-bikes/a-16780694

Tech-savvy Vietnam coffee farmers brew global takeover

By Cat Barton (AFP) 


Coffee farmer Ama Diem is pictured at his coffee farm in the suburbs of Buon Ma Thuot city, Vietnam on March 10, 2013 (AFP/File, Hoang Dinh Nam)

UON MA THUOT, Vietnam — Most Vietnamese coffee farmers have never heard of a double tall skinny latte, but they could tell you the price of the beans that go into one in their sleep.

From high-tech Israeli irrigation systems to text message updates of global prices for the commodity, coffee farming in Vietnam's Central Highlands has come a long way since the French first introduced the bean over a century ago.

"I used to carry my coffee to market by bicycle," said 44-year-old farmer Ama Diem. "Now I check the bean price on my mobile phones" before making the trip.

By texting "CA" to the number 8288 from any Vietnamese mobile phone, farmers almost instantly receive a message with the London prices of Robusta coffee beans and the New York price of Arabica beans from a data supply firm.

Farmers are only too aware that the price of coffee -- the second most traded commodity in the world after oil -- can move quickly.

"We only take the coffee to market when we can be sure of getting a high price," Diem told AFP at his plantation outside Vietnam's coffee capital Buon Ma Thuot. "We check the price a lot."

Vietnamese coffee farmers have changed the global market: if you had a cup this morning, there is a high chance you consumed at least some Vietnamese beans with companies such as Nestle and Britain's Costa Coffee among major buyers.

In 20 years, Vietnam went from contributing less than 0.1 percent of world production in 1980 to some 13 percent in 2000 -- staggering growth that has been partially blamed for the collapse of global coffee prices in the 1990s.

The rise of cash crops such as coffee in the Central Highlands has come at a price, however. Some indigenous minorities have lost their land to large-scale plantations, often run by majority Kinh who have migrated to the region. Demonstrations have been repressed.

The communist country is now the world's second-largest coffee producer, but is seen as high volume rather than high quality -- its bitter-tasting Robusta wins few accolades internationally and is mostly exported as raw beans.

"Vietnam is an amazing phenomenon," said Jonathan Clark, general director of coffee exporter Dakman.

He said exports "shot up" last year to nearly rival Brazil, the world's top exporter and producer.

Last year, Vietnam exported 1.73 million tons of coffee, worth some $3.67 billion and accounting for more than 50 percent of the world's Robusta, which is used in instant coffee or other blends.

Coffee consumption in Asia is on the rise and roasters are eyeing the low-cost country -- where there is no tax on coffee exports -- to set up operations to boost their regional presence, Clark said.

As consumption volumes have stagnated in the west, Vietnam, with its growing middle class and long standing love of coffee, is full of "tremendous opportunities", Jinlong Wang, president of Starbucks Asia Pacific, told AFP.

Starbucks -- which opened its first store in southern Ho Chi Minh City in February -- says it could open hundreds more in the near future in Vietnam, which it describes as a "dynamic, exciting" market.

The country's volcanic soil is perfect for growing coffee, and while global coffee drinkers are more used to Arabica -- which has 1.5 percent caffeine -- they should wake up and smell the joys of 2.5 percent strength Robusta, according to Vietnam's "coffee king" Dang Le Nguyen Vu.

The founder of home-grown coffee giant Trung Nguyen -- which has 55 stores in Vietnam and five in Singapore -- is passionate about putting Vietnam's Robusta coffee on the map.

"Robusta is not lower quality. It's just that globally, people have learned to drink Arabica coffee," Vu told AFP in an interview at the Trung Nguyen Village in Buon Ma Thuot.

A big part of the company's work is to improve the quality of local beans, working with farmers to introduce high-tech irrigation, reduce pesticide use and boost their income.

Trung Nguyen already exports to 60 countries and Vu said Starbucks' recent arrival in his homeland had increased his determination to open cafes in the United States offering Vietnam's traditional style of thick, strong coffee brewed in individual drip filters.

"We must be able to surpass Starbucks. We must offer something more attractive for US consumers," Vu said.

"I want the world to understand that Vietnamese coffee is the best, the cleanest, most special coffee."

Copyright © 2013 AFP. All rights reserved.

PLEASE READ

SON: "Daddy, may I ask you a question?"
DAD: "Yeah sure, what is it?"
SON: "Daddy, how much do you make an hour?"
DAD: "That's none of your business. Why do you ask such a thing?"
SON: "I just want to know. Please tell me, how much do you make an hour?"
DAD: "If you must know, I make $100 an hour."
SON: "Oh! (With his head down).
SON: "Daddy, may I please borrow $50?"
The father was furious.
DAD: "If the only reason you asked that is so you can borrow some money to buy a silly toy or some other nonsense, then you march yourself straight to your room and go to bed. Think about why you are being so selfish. I work hard everyday for such this childish behavior."

The little boy quietly went to his room and shut the door.
The man sat down and started to get even angrier about the little boy's questions. How dare he ask such questions only to get some money?
After about an hour or so, the man had calmed down, and started to think:
Maybe there was something he really needed to buy with that $ 50 and he really didn't ask for money very often. The man went to the door of the little boy's room and opened the door.

DAD: "Are you asleep, son?"

SON: "No daddy, I'm awake".
DAD: "I've been thinking, maybe I was too hard on you earlier. It's been a long day and I took out my aggravation on you. Here's the $50 you asked for."

The little boy sat straight up, smiling.
SON: "Oh, thank you daddy!"
Then, reaching under his pillow he pulled out some crumpled up bills. The man saw that the boy already had money, started to get angry again. The little boy slowly counted out his money, and then looked up at his father.

DAD: "Why do you want more money if you already have some?"

SON: "Because I didn't have enough, but now I do.

"Daddy, I have $100 now. Can I buy an hour of your time? Please come home early tomorrow. I would like to have dinner with you."
The father was crushed. He put his arms around his little son, and he begged for his forgiveness. It's just a short reminder to all of you working so hard in life. We should not let time slip through our fingers without having spent some time with those who really matter to us, those close to our hearts. Do remember to share that $100 worth of your time with someone you love? If we die tomorrow, the company that we are working for could easily replace us in a matter of days. But the family and friends we leave behind will feel the loss for the rest of their lives. And come to think of it, we pour ourselves more into work than to our family.

Some things are more important.

TAKEN FROM BLOG: http://kumbangjingga.blogspot.com/2013/02/sedikit-renungan-untuk-mereka-yg.html

Philips TLED lamp prototype combines efficiency, brightness and warmth

Philips creates the world's most energy-efficient warm white LED lamp
First LED lamp prototype delivering 200 lumen per watt high quality light, halving the energy use compared to current LED lamps

Eindhoven, the Netherlands – 11/04/13 Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHIA) announces a new innovation in LED lighting, creating the world's most energy-efficient LED lamp suitable for general lighting applications. Philips researchers developed a tube lighting (TL) replacement TLED prototype that produces a record 200 lumens per watt of high-quality white light (compared with 100lm/W for fluorescent lighting and just 15lm/W for traditional light bulbs). This prototype TLED lamp is twice as efficient as predecessor lamps, basically halving the energy used.

With lighting accounting for more than 19% of the world's total electricity consumption, this innovation promises to drive massive energy and cost savings across the globe. The 200lm/W TLED lamp is expected to hit the market in 2015 for office and industry applications before ultimately being used in the home.

The new TLED prototype lamp from Philips marks the first time that lighting engineers have been able to reach 200lm/W efficiency without compromising on light quality[1], with all parameters required to meet the stringent requirements for office lighting. "This again is a major breakthrough in LED lighting and will further drive the transformation of the lighting industry," explains Rene van Schooten, CEO Light Sources & Electronics for Philips Lighting. "After being recognized for our quality of LED light (mimicking traditional light bulbs) to creating new experience with Philips Hue (the connected light system for the home), we now present the next innovative step in doubling lighting efficiency. It's exciting to imagine the massive energy and cost savings it will bring to our planet and customers."

Significant energy and cost savings
The TLED lamps are intended to replace fluorescent tube lighting used in office and industry, which currently account for more than half of the world's total lighting. Conversion to the twice-as-efficient 200lm/W TLED lamps will generate significant energy and cost savings.

In the US alone, for example, fluorescent lights consume around 200 terawatts of electricity annually. If these lights were all replaced with 200lm/W TLEDs, the US would use around 100 terawatts less energy (equivalent to 50 medium sized power plants) saving more than US$12 billion and preventing around 60 million metric tons of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere.[2]

This new LED innovation from Philips underlines the value and power of its lighting business, bringing together its expertise in LED technology, lamps, applications and systems. Market leading innovations from Philips Lumileds, as in phosphor technology and blue LEDs, together contribute to the high quality of light and advances in efficiency.

[1] Comfortable, workable light requires a color temperature of 3000–4000 kelvins, a color rendering index of at least 80, and an R9 saturated red level of no less than 20.

2 U.S. Department of Energy report January 2012: Energy savings potential of solid-state lighting in general illumination applications