Breakthroughs in LED phosphors...

http://www.ia.ucsb.edu/pa/display.aspx?pkey=3156

Check it out!

""Our target is to get to 90 percent efficiency, or 300 lumens per watt," said DenBaars, who also is a professor of electrical and computer engineering and co-director of the SSLEC. Current incandescent light bulbs, by comparison, are at roughly 5 percent efficiency, and fluorescent lamps are a little more efficient at about 20 percent."

[...]We have already demonstrated up to 60 percent efficiency in lab Demos.

Click to expand...

So we just gotta wait 10 more years

Thats awesome! Gettin some LEDs soon to see what the hype is all about. Should be here soon. haha if only i had a time machine!

I've been thinking about this quite a bit lately. If we want LED's to get much more efficient, imo, we should start looking at the phosphor level. Whether it's new, more efficient phosphors, new phosphor doping methods, or simply a cheap and effective method for heat sinking the phosphor layer, I believe increasing phosphor efficiency is actually just as -if not more- important than increasing chip efficiency.

I need to find the article but Bridgelux licensed tech exclusively to Toshiba I believe, for silicone diodes. That to me could be the wave. Phosphor may play a role, but it may be phazed out altogether as well....

I will look for the link, its out there out a few different places.

A decade ago it was 1 Watt diodes. One Watt! What next, color TV?