FSU Researchers Develop "New Generation" LED

FSU Researchers Develop "New Generation" LED


It's being called the next generation LED. It has the potential to brighten your TV, phone and computer screens.
Researchers at FSU say they've created a way to make a brighter, cheaper LED and they're trying to land the patents to prove it.
It's a tiny light with big potential.
This LED - made with something called "perovskites" - glows about 25 times brighter than the same LED used in a typical computer screen.
FSU researchers Hanwei Gao and Biwu Ma says that could be a game changer.
"Under small voltage or low power we can achieve high brightness, so you can really tell this technology is power efficient," said Dr. Biwu Ma, an associate professor of chemical engineering.
"For example if you have two bulbs, an LED and a CFL, right, people would definitely go for the LED if the price were the same, because they know the LED consumes less energy and that means smaller bills, electricity bills," said Dr. Hanwei Gao, an assistant professor of physics. "So if we can reduce the cost of the LED, then the LED will win."
We visited FSU's Ditmer lab where Gao and Ma and their students have been working on the organic-inorganic hybrid.
Not only does the LED technology have the potential to lower the cost of light bulbs, televisions and other screens, they say, but both the device and the luminescent material inside can be made quickly and easily in the lab.
The research team made one for us in about an hour.
"We can solution process it in air, without high temperature, without high vacuum, which is usually required for conventional LED devices," Dr. Gao said.
Gao and Ma have applied for patents for their technology, but say it's hard predict how quickly it'll go from this lab to commercialization to a store near you.
"It's very exciting," Dr. Ma said.
The professors tell us that this type of LED technology tends to be unstable in humidity, so they've tweaked their design. They're confident if they can get it to work in hot, humid Florida, they can get it to work anywhere.