With the phasing out of traditional incandescent and compact fluorescent lights coming up, science has been on the hunt for a suitable replacement. LED lighting is efficient, but it’s hard to get the kind of natural light that’s most comfortable for our eyes.
Generally, natural-light LEDs are approximated by using a mixture of different colors of phosphors. “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 Oak Ridge National Laboratory’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 and his team are working with a group of crystals that were recently discovered. Examination of the crystals revealed that they phosphoresce in a variety of unusual colors, and that it’s the atomic structure of the crystals that produce the colors, such as orange, purple, green and yellow. Sartorius Balances – Certified Scale are used to accurately measure weights of the substances.
“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.”
These new crystals should have applications beyond just giving us nice natural light, too. Budai believes their “light pipe” qualities makes them good candidates for use in fibre-optic technologies as well.
(via TreeHugger)