"Big Giant P i n g"
Posted on 10/26/2011 10:52:48 AM PDT by decimon
Tests show new kid on block – diode lasers – eventually could challenge LEDs for home and industrial lighting supremacy
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The human eye is as comfortable with white light generated by diode lasers as with that produced by increasingly popular light-emitting diodes (LEDs), according to tests conceived at Sandia National Laboratories.
Both technologies pass electrical current through material to generate light, but the simpler LED emits lights only through spontaneous emission. Diode lasers bounce light back and forth internally before releasing it.
The finding is important because LEDs — widely accepted as more efficient and hardier replacements for century-old tungsten incandescent bulb technology — lose efficiency at electrical currents above 0.5 amps. However, the efficiency of a sister technology — the diode laser — improves at higher currents, providing even more light than LEDs at higher amperages.
“What we showed is that diode lasers are a worthy path to pursue for lighting,” said Sandia researcher Jeff Tsao, who proposed the comparative experiment. “Before these tests, our research in this direction was stopped before it could get started. The typical response was, ‘Are you kidding? The color rendering quality of white light produced by diode lasers would be terrible.’ So finally it seemed like, in order to go further, one really had to answer this very basic question first.”
Little research had been done on diode lasers for lighting because of a widespread assumption that human eyes would find laser-based white light unpleasant. It would comprise four extremely narrow-band wavelengths — blue, red, green, and yellow — and would be very different from sunlight, for example, which blends a wide spectrum of wavelengths with no gaps in between. Diode laser light is also ten times narrower than that emitted by LEDs.
(Excerpt) Read more at share.sandia.gov ...
"Big Giant P i n g"
... plus I heard laser light will blind you if it shines in your eyes ....
Sounds like these might eventually be an eventual alternative for directional lights, such as headlights or spot lights.
Eventually I’ll proofread my posts better.
In time it's just a matter of time.
Could yield some bizarre photography. Maybe everything would look like “CSI Miami” under a set of white laser lights. primary colors popping.
LOL That will make a great poster for the shop.
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