Developing new LED technology to reduce cost and prolong life

According to the science and technology daily reports, the use of LED is becoming more and more widespread, but the two methods to produce white LED are not too high in cost and short in the service life of the products, limiting the development of the industry. Recently, researchers at the University of Nuremberg - Erlangen, Germany, developed a new production process using the fluorescent protein material, making the production of white LED simple and inexpensive, safe and environmentally friendly, and also greatly extended the service life of the product.

Compared with incandescent lamp, halogen lamp 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 its relatively complex production process. There are usually two methods for the production of white LED: one is the coating of phosphorus or rare earth inorganic materials on the surface of blue LED. The white LED produced by this method is long and bright, but the process is complex and the cost is high; the other is to use organic LED to insert multiple organic semiconductors with sandwiches between two electrodes. Layer, this process is relatively simple, but the product brightness and life is poor.

One ideal way is to combine the two processes, and the researchers at Nuremberg - Erlangen university are based on this idea. Dr. Costa, the Advanced Material Engineering Department of the University, and Professor Thorne Wald, a professor of synthetic biology, invented a simple and cheap production process. They apply the fluorescent protein to a rubber material and then embed it into the LED. Costa said that the fluorescent protein is both environmentally friendly and cheap, but also easy to color, color or white can be controlled. The only defect is that the fluorescent protein is stable only in the buffer water solution, so it can not be used in the conventional coating process. In addition, researchers have to solve the problem of stability of fluorescent protein in different environments, such as high temperature and humidity.

To this end, the researchers have developed a new coating technology. They apply the fluorescent protein to a gelatinous material, which is made up of a protein water solution and a polymer blend, which is used to connect the aqueous solution of the protein to the mesh gel and maintain the necessary humidity. They converted the gel into a rubber material by vacuum drying and then used it for the multi-layer coating of white LED. Costa said they have successfully made a long, efficient, environmentally friendly, and cheap white LED with this method. He said the production process is expected to be applied to the industrial production of the next generation of LED.

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