De LED develops new technologies for cost reduction and life extension

According to ScienceDaily, LED has been used more and more widely. But the two way to produce white LED is not too expensive, that is, the short life of the product, which limits the development of the industry. Recently, researchers at Nuremberg Erlangen University in Germany have developed a new production process using fluorescent protein materials, making the production of white LED simple, inexpensive, safe and environmentally friendly, and at the same time prolonging the service life of the product.

Compared with incandescent lamps, halogen lamps and other lighting materials, white LED has the advantages of long life, high energy efficiency, environmental protection and easy maintenance, but the disadvantage is that the price is high, which is mainly due to the relatively complex production process. There are usually two ways to produce white LED. One is to use phosphor or rare earth inorganic materials on the surface of blue LED. The white LED produced by this method has long service life and good brightness, but the process is complex and the cost is high. The other is to use organic LED to embed multiple organic semiconductors like sandwiches between the two electrodes. Layer, this process is relatively simple, but the product brightness and life expectancy is poor.

An ideal way is to combine these two processes. The researchers from Nuremberg Erlangen university are doing research based on this idea. Dr. Costa of the Advanced Materials Engineering Department of the University, in collaboration with Professor Thorne Wald, Professor of synthetic biology, invented a simple and cheap production process. They spread fluorescent protein onto a rubber material and then embed it into LED. Costa said that fluorescent protein is not only environmentally friendly but also cheap. It is also easy to mix colors, and color or white can be controlled. The only defect is that the fluorescent protein is stable only in the buffer solution, so it can not be applied in conventional coating process. In addition, researchers must also solve the stability of fluorescent proteins under different conditions such as high temperature and humidity.

For this reason, researchers have developed a new coating technology. They use fluorescent protein on a gelatinous material, which consists of a protein aqueous solution and a polymer blend. The function of polymer is to connect protein solution to mesh gel and maintain the necessary humidity. They convert the gel into a rubber material by vacuum drying, and then use it in the multilayer coating of white LED. Costa said that they used this method to successfully create long life, high energy efficiency, environmental protection and cheap white LED. He said that this production process is expected to be applied to the next generation of LED industrial production.

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