Thanks to Anker for supporting this video! Check out the Anker SOLIX X1 and request a free quote at ankerfast.club/ZirothWithX1 ! I have put chapters in the video in case you want to skip around. Where do you see this innovation being best used?
Hey Ziroth! The SOLIX system sounds interesting, but do you have an explanation of the marketing terms they use ("Thermal boosting", "InfiniPower", "Barrel Effect")? The web page doesn't go into any technical detail, which makes it sound like pure marketing without any technical meaning, but I'd love to be proven wrong.
Sod off with your scam, thinks it's smart, dodgy powerbank system. Nickel Iron batteries are all we ever needed or wanted. No computers need apply. Last a century, PROVEN. And will never catch fire. Not Patent able of course. Still available for critical industrial, military, ship, aircraft use. And home off grid power systems. Fro. China. US battery makers killed US manufacture in the 1970s. Cause they didn't like high energy density batteries that are cheap to make, safe and last several lifetimes.
Yeah I've seen this concept at least 4 years ago but applied to solar panels. Light goes in and very little is reflected out. Graphene is used as the building block.
That was my first thought! There must be something to that, they could use much smaller packaging and still get that directionality, even with the large LEDs used in spotlights.
Yarp. Fresnel lens caps/covers for LEDs have been around a while. Not sure why they're not more widely used. I remember in my high school days being fascinated by the classrom overhead projecter and its Fresnel lens.
Except it's not a lens. Making outer surface less conducive to internal reflection improves the amount of light that escapes, but it becomes extremely diffused - the opposite of a lens.
Yes, I suspect you're referring to the development GaN (gallium nitride), which gave us superbrite blue LEDS, ~1993. Cree actually made SiC (silicon carbide) blue LEDs, in the mid 1980s. I remember them first sold for over $50 each, ~1985. The price dropped to under a buck ~1990, and I actually designed them into a product, at that time. In 1994 I was calling in an routine order to Digi-key, which included the Cree product, and found that all their LED products had been pulled. Later I found out, it was due to the introduction of the new GaN LEDs , coming out of Japan. Shortly there after bright blue LEDs where everywhere ! This also was the breakthrough that made LED tech for illumination, possible, and finally killed the incandescent lamp. Well, after ~20 years of ramp up.
You lazy wankers talk all around the inventor of the Blue LED but never mention the name of the person or the company: Shuji Nakamura of Nichia Corporation
Nice side effect: Much better cooling. If the waste heat can be significantly reduced, liftime of led bulbs could be extended considerably, since most fail due to the leds cooking the drive electronics. It could also bring another leap in tiny flashlights. Those are often limited in runtime on higher levels by the temperature rise and not by the batterie. With the more efficiant leds, a significantly higher continous light output could be achived.
more refractive surfaces to create more light is not a new concept...just our ability to work well with tinier stuff has.... car blinkers...bike reflectors...road signs... diamond rings...glitter in paint... all use this technology and a better light blub only runs the old light bulb company out of business.... a tiny beam of light pointed at a diamond with proper angles cut could light a room like some indiana jones scene
You mean that the lifetime of bulbs would remain exactly the same while manufacturing costs drop considerably... Do you think that every LED bulb on the market being severely overdriven is an oversight?
@@Bobo-ox7fj They're not cheaper or longer lasting, just more efficient. They produce more light with the same amount of electricity. This means very marginal reduction of power grid load from using fewer bulbs, which power companies don't oppose (the same way they didn't oppose LED bulbs, and back in the day they even gave away short lifespan high efficiency incandescent bulbs for free). And this means substantial increase in battery lifetime for portable illumination devices, which they'll gladly take even if these LEDs are way more expensive.
I always find it remarkable how much of our innovation is copying what is already there in nature and wild life and then repurposing it for our own needs.
This is game changing for so many technologies that rely on LEDs; from light bulbs to TVs and especially VR headset that require a lot of light to show enough detail. Another possible avenue for innovation this biomimetic design can have is in solar panels. Since LEDs and solar panels are designed, produced and function similarly except in the opposite direction of work, maybe it's possible to increase their efficiency in energy generation using a similar technique to this.
The only problem here is the optical transmission efficiency of the substrate being used, The principle is sound on the surface, but the difference in light absorption at productive angles and wavelength pass-thru may be needed to get the higher efficiencies that they are talking about in the output of LEED light. But yes, you are thinking about this constructively.
Engineered texturing is already a major topic in solar panel research. Most normal current industry standard glass faced solar panels are really quite shiny when viewed from the right angle to the sun. Thats bad. All that light should become electrons, not glare. Antireflexive techniques, smaller profile current collectors, a lot can be done to reduce this.
@@Zonkotron Solar panels are already coated in anti-glare compound. It's a complete no-brainer considering that any reflected light is a straight loss of power. The outer surface must be smooth in order to prevent dust buildup, which is a lot worse for efficiency than small amount of leftover reflectivity.
Commercial providers having been sandblasting their sapphire substrates for years. So this is a minor evolution. But it's worth pointing out that the refractive index changes between the firefly optic medium (n=1.4) and air (n=1) is a lot less than for sapphire (n=1.7) and gallium nitride (n=2.1). It is that much larger difference that makes internal reflections in LEDs so bad.
Just as an historic reference, the first LEDs, as a product, came out in the late 1960s. The first LEDs I bought, were in 1973, and made by Motorola. They are RED, and very dim. LEDs bright enough, and much more efficient, to replace other forms of illumination (other than just being used as indicators, or numeric displays) was caused by the GaN (gallium nitride) revolution, starting ~1993. Anything that can make LEDs even more efficient is almost unbelievable, considering how far the tech has gone, so far. For those who hobby, in electronics, LEDs will emit visible light over a much wider power range than old style incandescents. A 120V (any wattage) incandescent will barely glow with 20V applied (6:1 range). Where as an LED rated for 20mA will still output quite a bit of light well under 1mA. Still quite visible well under 100uA (0.1mA, >200:1 range).
I remember earlier LEDs being such energy hogs. To get an reasonably improved battery life (for cave exploring and diving), I had to design a pulse driver circuit (the first was about 20% on/80% off, with a saw-tooth waveform) and I relied on the human eye/brain persistence effect with light to make the pulsed light "look" like a continuously ON light. Fellow cavers and divers were amazed at how long 2 alkaline "C" cells would keep a bright light going...much longer than in the incandescent flashlights we used in common (some group buys) and with what appeared to be the equivalent output.
It is rediculous, with what littke power leds still produce usable light. I've build keyfobs with two ag0 button cells (~10mAh) that have an led running at 2μA for a year. And they are bright enough to find in a dark room. At 20μA (~0.00005 W) they are bright enough to make out words on a page. And another light build with 3x D cell batteries running at 0.125 mA / ~ 0.0003W is bright enout to illuminate a small hallway at night so that one doesn't trip ). All while being able to glow for ~5 years continously.
@@clockworkvanhellsing372 I use a boost converter for white LEDs @ 10mA - my wife likes the brightness. 100 Hrs with two AAs. 10 years flashing (every second - find it in the dark) on the same batteries.
I was experimenting with making voltage/current controlled resistors recently (that I will be usning for upcoming projects). One way to do it, that's simple and work well is to put an LED next to a photoresistor and close them off from ambient light (I put them inside a small piece of aluminium tube and sealed the ends with black hot melt glue - with just the leads sticking out). I was surpriced how little current the LED needed for the resistance to drop significantly. Just running like 20-40 uA thru the LED gave the same resistance as having the photoresistor just sitting in a well lit room. Then when I tested to run about the same current thru another LED of the same bunch that I bought and just having having it free in the room - it was glowing really brightly at that current. Even at like 5-8 uA, it's still visible in daylight. Those are green LEDs (which I chosed because the photo resistors I use have their peak sensitivity between green and yellow - about 540-560 nm).
@@Speeder84XL I've tested quite a few colours. Red, yellow and orangenare still behind and only glow visible at ~20μA. Green ones are okay and everything based on a blue led + phosphore coating will be quite bright even at 1μA. 2μA lets you make out words on a page. Nice to see others experimenting with verry low currents and leds
@@ZirothTech I saw the same feedback at least 10 times in the comments. I watched another video from your channel that had the same issue. And finally I removed your channel from my recommended. It's so bad it's not worth the time. Sorry for being so direct.
indicator lamps don't require to be brighter. This improvement still adds to the over all cost of manufacture. This tech is for LED illumination where the excess heat of over driving them shortens their life and reduces efficiency.
I get you. These will become the mass produced standard and show up in every cheap device. I recently got a new router from my ISP with green LEDs that already now cast shadows on the wall 6 m away. ^^
@@carlm1595also means that they can be driven with less power for the same output... equalling power saving and longer run times (assuming batteries) Good also for street lights... same power but more brightness. In NZ where they replaced the old halogen lights... the smaller side street lights suck and you have dark areas where there were none before. They halted the rollout to see what could be done to address it. But I don't know if they found a solution. At the very least no retrofitting for existing replaced lights.
Yeah, and have them on your roof to trap dirt and dust much faster. Maybe in space this would be a good idea, but it's not going to work on earth with devices with lifetimes hugely longer than fireflies.
I doubt that would work simply because most of the light hitting panels is coming from a single orientation. These structures work for LEDs because the photons are reaching the interface from a wide variety of angles.
LEDs have come a huge way in terms of watts/lumen ratio and passed the incandescent stuff long ago but to think they can improve a lot more is exciting! They are even becoming a thing in video projectors which was a predominantly hallide lamp powered device!
If they can now achieve 90% efficiency, imagine how much less power usage that would translate to in cell phones. The majority of battery life is consumed by the screen on time.
this is spesifically for LED bulb, not smth like OLED or any other screen technology. it could be translatable, but it's not the same thing and could need time to adapt. This will apply to bigger display though like advertisement screen on highrise building
@@aronseptianto8142The method of production isn't the issue here, it's about getting the light produced (whether from LEDs or OLEDs) out in a more efficient manner. Even if they can't directly integrate the biomemetic design during the production of the OLED, the can still implement it in the surrounding lens/diffuser that encapsulates it.
When we move off Earth, I have a feeling that our vegetable gardens will use LED lights. Even a one percent gain in efficiency would make a big difference, so this size of effect is simply huge!
water and nutrients to grow plant based food are going to be the bigger challenges but light is going to also be a factor. Some studies have proven that mimicking the light of seasonal growth with accounting for the gradual increase and decrease of light on the plant sustains a better fruit and seeds for next generation natural food growth. The only other challenge to overcome by far is the space to grow the food and the energy to maintain a sustainable system. These things look easy in Hollywood productions but when scaled to meet the needs of a ship capable of even traveling to our nearest neighboring star becomes problematic, and then when it comes to something so vital, you would absolutely want at least N+1 redundancy. Water if used for radiation shielding for the ship and recycling that would be a place to start, but we don't know the long-term effects of water that has been continuously bombarded with high energy cosmic rays which at a minimum would cause ionization of the water, but could also cause radiolysis of the water molecules into hydrogen an hydroxyl radicals. This water which is most likely not pure H2O could then react with other molecules like minerals in the water to form other various chemical reactions that could be detrimental to the ship inhabitants or may possibly be detrimental to the ship's systems in the form of corrosive or caustic effects. It would be great to just have one of those replicators from Star Trek onboard for spare parts, a cup of Earl Grey or even capable of replicating spare parts but we are far from that capability, and being prepared with at least N+1 spare parts for a ship capable of making it to the Alpha Centauri system is estimated to take the space of at least 1/3 to 1/2 the size of the living working spacecraft and systems, Space exploration is a conundrum fraught with great promise, but it also comes with some very high risks and costs. I'm confident enough in my education and knowledge to say a manned trip to Mars in the next 20-50 years is nearly impossible due to the duration and tight requirements. Any attempt should be questioned and only very cautiously encouraged. Any consideration should firstly be met with multiple mechanical system successes before any human attempt is made.
I use LED bulbs now to grow food indoors and also outside under the edge of my camper roof at night to triple the growth rate of tomato plants in simply 5 gallon hydro buckets. A 10 watt LED bulb can work wonders. I also have 15, 24, and 36 watt ones and various types built into narrow rails or round panels. You can grow tomatoes and even cucumbers inside all year and of course a wide range of smaller herbs and salad greens and even citrus trees. It`s a fun and productive hobby and a much less expensive and safer way to get your lettuces for salads and sandwiches. It`s fun to grow the weird little micro dwarf tomatoes or even large varieties of determinate tomato plants and it`s exciting to experiment and develop new or improved methods.
The angle of incidence is very important in solar panels. It's not about making them more efficient, it is about making them work for more hours of the day. Early morning and late afternoon where the angle of incidence prevents most light from entering the panel. There has been a lot of work done in this area but each has its drawbacks. This may work better than other attempts.
There is a possible solution with graphene to. a single layer of graphene is water proof so just a few layers would give adequate replacement for the current resins ,but with a huge increase in photon escape . But who knew the original designer would have a great way to maximize light emission efficiency !?.
I wish this video was meant for science enthusiasts that have basic knowledge about science, and condensed into 2 minutes instead of drawn out almost 12 and with a long commercial plug.
Gawd so much was filler. But hey, surely that's the life of a TH-camr nowadays. He's probably optimising some metric because of the data presented to him from other videos.
I reckon it could. The way that light photon escaped. It's just a revesed action. You're now taking in light. Rather than, beaming out photons. And that refraction layer looks to be practically symmetrical.
Fascinating how nature again informs us to make what we make batter. (Opinion: The first ~7 minutes needed a lot of editing. Could have been 3 minutes.)
@@wanderingrock6756 With a little work, if he wants, he could describe the way the current LEDs direct the light in one direction with the shape of the metal parts you can see in a plain 2-lead though-hole type. He can get details from those knowledgeable of the insects and the (caloric?) energy they expend to produce that fascinating little flash of light. (etc.) ...not fill time with sloppy images and repetitive copy. Doing THAT, he risks losing the audience before the really interesting information he provides in the second half of this video.
Biomimetics has been a deep area of interest in all the sciences for decades. From the moment the scientific community acknowledged natural selection and genetics it became a given that natures own crucible could create the ideal solution for just about anything. For example, metasurfaces exist now as a field of study due to studying how light changes when reflecting off a butterflys wings.
@@mnomadvfx For me its much harder to see with the light spectrum that they produce. And I have a harder time driving in nighttime snowfall with my led headlights.
Very clear. Loved the science 😊 Please add a section on the companies that are converting the ideas into saleable product as investors and potential customers viewing your great video could help bridge the gap between good ideas and viable production!
breaking symmetry in LEDs is a very old idea. see 1998 patent 5,779,924 that one uses a truncated pyramid shape with sharp angles just like the firefly idea. There have been many more ideas since.
I guess I just need to rough up the outer surface of my LEDs (randomly) with some coarse sandpaper to increase the escaping non-reflected light. Maybe. Most of us are just happy with the efficiency of our LED illumination over CFL technology, not to mention filament bulbs. Getting more light for the already low energy input/consumption of our LEDs... is not a big issue for even those of us living 100% on solar energy. We're more likely to use PWM to dim our illumination rather than wonder, "How can I get this dim light brighter?"
Very interesting look at an approach for improving light extraction. A recurring flaw in this video, though, is repeatedly showing 1990s-era 3mm plastic-coated leaded LEDs. That is just not how the serious LED lighting revolution has progressed -- it required surface-mounted, much higher power LEDs that in the last decade started exceeding 50% total efficacy including light extraction. There is doubtless further room for improvement, and even small gains are highly beneficial as the light per heat ratio increases wildly as you progress beyond 50% efficacy; but it is important to keep the opportunity for further efficiency gains in perspective.
"The light pollution problem isn't due to the technology, it's about how we use it" Well said. But do you really think we will not spread more efficient LEDs everywhere, now that we'll got them ? And, like someone says in the comment, "turn night into day" ? We're already turning winter in summer, I guess this is the next logical step...
Unfortunately the most difficult part of reducing energy usage is humans. Like you said, if we can run brighter and cheaper lights then we will be more likely to have more lights and have them on more often. I would hope that they are mainly used just for replacing existing lights and using less power though. A potential massive improvement due to this is torches, it could be used to make the torches last longer on a single battery or to make them brighter, both of which would be very good.
What if you can use that technique of light extraction efficiency in reverse on solar panels to extract almost all photons from the sun to make the efficiency upto 90% like they did to the A symmetric surface of the LED.
@@aronseptianto8142 yea he rambled on for over 7 min before even says what the breakthrough is. And its jagged edges. Which I can say in one short sentence.
The introduction of the blue LED was an important step forward because added to red and green LEDs makes the white light. This meant they could be used for large scale general illumination. Especially for street lighting, vehicles and buildings. The efficiency of LEDs has played a bit part in reducing the electricity demand from power grids. This can be measured. So if these Bio-inspired LEDs realise the efficiencies suggested, the power demand for lighting may further reduce and we will need less power stations and avoid the damage they do to the environment. This is a GOOD thing! However, if the development of the blue LED is an indication, it will take a decade or two to for such an innovation to find its way from laboratory demonstrations to general deployment in a high volume applications such as street lighting. If the economics are favourable, it will surely happen. It is pretty easy to measure the cost of electricity for lighting.
With that patent in place, I don't expect this tech to be widely accessible nor affordable for at least 10 years or so. But it's an interesting and important finding, nonetheless!
The introduction of the blue LED was an important step forward because added to red and green LEDs makes the white light. This meant they could be used for large scale general illumination. Especially for street lighting, vehicles and buildings. The efficiency of LEDs has played a bit part in reducing the electricity demand from power grids. This can be measured. So if these Bio-inspired LEDs realise the efficiencies suggested, the power demand for lighting may further reduce and we will need less power stations and avoid the damage they do to the environment. This is a GOOD thing! However, if the development of the blue LED is an indication, it will take a decade or two to for such an innovation to find its way from laboratory demonstrations to general deployment in a high volume applications such as street lighting. If the economics are favourable, it will surely happen. It is pretty easy to measure the cost of electricity for lighting.
Wow, I totally understand this because I have studied and worked in the fiber optics manufacturing sector for nearly four decades now. We use many of these same properties for efficiently transmitting light first into the core of the fiber by being less than the numerical aperture and refractive index for the light entering the cone or angle of incidence, I.e., Snell's Law. And what will work for light going in, should work or can be applied to light coming out, provided there is no polarization changes or chromatic dispersion which could cause some light to be diffused. Fascinating, but I'm really struggling why this took so long to come to light (no pun intended) as it all is mainly the practically we have been striving for in the efficiency of getting light into fibers more effectively to have better amplification in long distance transmission regen and amplification systems. Perhaps this will translate into more optically effective lens packaging for precision switching optical transceivers.
So, in retrospect, solar panels could be made in a similar way where the structure is mapped, to trap as many photons that are incoming instead of allowing them to be reflected and escape. Both LED and solar, have very similar technical trates.
LED Light bulbs are sold as 60W equivilant and similar ratings so if we get more efficiant LED's there will be hardly any more pollution, Yeah it will make some extream LED's more powerfull but who really uses those on a daily bases only in stadiums and stuff similar, it will be great to have this new LED's, Lighting will be extreamly cheap, My house is currently filled with LIFX Smart LED Light bulbs and I hardly notice them on my energy monitor as is
Their problem wasn't that they didn't have enough light, but that they are waaaaaaaaaaay too bright and damaging to eyes. Leaving a blinding afterglow in the form of stripes and arrays of dots. People with astigmatism literally can't go on the streets safely anymore. The orange sodium glow is less visible so it's also less hindering to people with astigmatism, but white and blue leds will overlay an opaque layer over everything. Oncoming traffic sometimes forces me to just stop because I can't see anything. Glasses don't help against astigmatism either, it requires risky surgery.
its just the color temperature of them. The eyes are much more sensitive to blue light and so the warmer yellow orange of old incandesant or halogen bulbs was much less blinding when its dark outside. There needs to simply be a regulation making car headlights a warmer colour instead of pure and blinding white.
This is a great point, I touched on this briefly at the end of the video! I think we shouldn't be using this breakthrough to increase their brightness, but instead reduce the amount of energy needed for the same amount of light (or in fact less light in many places!).
I have no particular eye problem but I often half close my eyes and look to the left maintaining less than efficient vision when confronted with a BMW or a stupid electric contraption coming the other way. Last night, having spent nearly 14 hours on a taxi, train, RyanAir (Sevilla-Nightmare Stansted), Greater Anglia, the London Underground with its' stupid and confusing oystercards (It has been 49 years since I last experienced the London Underground and if I can avoid it, it will be the last, but it was the only way that we could get to the last coach home from Victoria (RyanAir deliberately time their flights and from the far end of the terminals to be as inconvenient as possible. Having passed security, Aeropuerto de Sevilla advise 13 minutes walk to Terminal C) ), we were confronted with a 3 mile walk home. Part of the walk is on UNLIT footpaths away from the road (supposedly for the delight of the walking public. There is one long section of pavement where we walked in the opposite direction to oncoming traffic on a long one-way sliproad. There was a full moon and light enough to see where we were going except when L.E.D. lit cars came towards obliterating our sight of the pavement, and when pulling a case, the last thing you want is to run the wheels through dog shit. The cars with proper lights helped to light the pavement. Having put the cases and bags in the house, we drove to a huge Tesco Open 6 a.m. -12 Midnight, 8-9 miles away, arriving at 10.20 p.m. to find all but the food section was closed off. No lettuce, no strawberries. The was a scattering of single bananas that either had split skins or were bruised to hell. I prevailed upon a member of staff to get another box or two of bananas making it clear that we were not going to waste money on rubbish. We got some nice pears and didn't want anything else but there were many other huge spaces where there wasn't any product. There were a few non-perishables that we wanted were not there. We then found that there were no proper tills open - only the self service monstrosities. My beloved insisted that we use it and the bill came to just over £56. My beloved scanned everything whilst I watched the painfully slow process and then, obediently, when told, I presented my Tesco credit card to the payment terminal. Nothing happened. "Now you have to do it again". "What ?" That was just for the Clubcard points ... NOW you can pay. >>>>> "MY CHRIST ! "
@@terryhoath1983 Try to remember Tesco employees are regular people without power, and you impact their wellness by how you act. There's a high chance you were rude out of frustration. I trust that was unintentional, but the effect [edit removed: affect] is the same in any case. More efficient LEDs will not fix this.
now that they've patented what the firefly uses to solve this problem it's certain this idea will disappear before it's even able to be used, how do you patent a naturally occurring phenomenon -_-. I really wish patents and copyright only lasted 5~20 years sigh.
I Have noticed some Leds last a while and some fail sooner than incandescent bulbs. So if this technology can use less energy to produce the same amount of light and also make the life span longer than its a win win.
A common problem with LED bulbs is the way they dissipate heat. Many of the closed bulb designs traps in a lot of heat and it is often this heat that causes them the fail prematurely.
Why do we keep getting advances in lights, but not like anything else lol..................... Fusion? nah Solar? Meh Hvac? Maybe Medical breakthroughs? LOL NOPE LED LIGHTS????????? YEAH BRO I CAN GET YOU AN LED LIGHT THAT LASTS 50 YEARS IS CHEAP AND COSTS NOTHING TO RUN!!!!!!!!!!!! I mean I'll take it.......
But Couzin - what we doing about ' ethical LEDs ' - WE are blinding OURSELVES. ' ...Do not look directly into the sun... ' but beaming UNshielded LEDs is a contemporary problem no one is addressing !🍀
The claim of 30% efficiency (01:20) is too low. The maximum possible luminous efficacy for a white light source with a CRI in between 80 and 90 is 350-400 Lumens per Watt. White LEDs over 300 Lumens per Watt have ALREADY been demonstrated, years ago.
Highly educational and thought provoking as always. You have a great channel. Also appreciate an introduction to the Anker SOLIX X1. I had no idea Anker had such devices. Thank you
The other reason LED bulbs are not as efficient as they could be is simply heat. IE a lot of lights run the LEDs at their maximum power rating as this uses less LEDs and reduces life of the bulb. Specifically they are designed to fail. Reduce a 15W led bulb to 6W by increasing the current sense resistor and it will give as much light as a 7.5W LED bulb. Not only that, it will run up to 40C cooler. That alone can extend the life by a factor of 100. IE 200,000 hours instead of 2000. That is 238 years in the lab. That assumes switching on the point in the cycle that is zero volts. In the real world 15 years is easily achieved.
Sure, no problem. LEDs are supposed to last what... 50k hours in their current design? But the circuit board they're installed on is *DESIGNED* (intentionally) to fail after 1500 hours or less.
Like so many advocates of new technology, you have tunnel vision. All you care about is efficiency. Does it occur to you that the energy lost by incandescent bulbs is not always wasted? It used to be common for people to sit under a warm incandescent bulbs reading a book or watching TV. They were comfortable. Now, if you are cold, you have to turn up the thermostat for the whole floor of your house! So how much energy did the conversion to LED save? Did you know that the shutdown of the production lines for high wattage incandescent bulbs also eliminated the manufacture of lower wattage and indicator bulbs for countless kinds of equipment? How much energy will be used to replace this equipment? One example. - my mother's oven required a special brass based 40w incandescent bulb. No LED or florescent bulb would work. After the ban, these bulbs disappeared from the market. They were not available online. I put 100 miles on my car trying to find one of these bulbs, for my mother's otherwise excellent condition oven. I finally found a couple in the dusty corner of an old Mom and Pop hardware store. All the while people were telling me I should just buy my mother a new oven. Besides the cost, do you have any idea how much energy it takes to roll the steel for a new oven, or bake the ceramic coating on? Do you have any idea of the energy requirements to dispose of the old oven and the environmental consequences? Do you have any idea how we will dispose of toxic solar panels and LED bulbs and panels? The tungsten filament in an incandescent bulbs is inert - no danger to the environment. Do you realize how much green CO2 absorbing vegetation is being destroyed by the installation of solar panel fields? Do you realize the effect on food prices? I could go on and on. Incidentally, I worked in engineering for 42 years, and in LED backlighting of LCD panels the last 24 years of my life. The concept that irregular surfaces pass light better than smooth (reflective) surfaces is not new. We were using this concept 15 years ago, and it had nothing to do with fireflies.
Electric Aviation (another TH-cam channel) came out with a video a little while back diving into the Ornithopter from Dune, and how doable it would be in real life. I see quite a lot of parallels between this video and the Ornithopter video. The guy talked about R&D into electrically-controlled polymer-based artificial muscles. Muscles that could function (eventually) like a bird, a bat, or an insect. I tried doing a deep dive into that, and I couldn't find much. Could you do a video looking into that?
LEDs last longer? that's weird because pretty much every light I ever bought been lasting almost shorter time than incandescent light or pretty much spot on exactly on the day as long as the 1 year warranty last or like less than 500 hours. And they cost more to buy.
I think it's unlikely that an efficiency upgrade would just make things brighter. We make things as bright as they "need" to be (need being stretched to its limits here in terms of things like headlights and advertising); nobody* says, I would make this brighter, but I'd blow my power budget. Energy efficiency just isn't the reason things are not brighter. * I'm sure there's some counterexample, but any such things would not be common enough for them to make a noticable difference in environmental illumination
One point completely missed. Incandescent lamps give out a continuous light. Fluorescent lamps flicker, so you see the brightest part of the flicker, as if it were continuous. So huge increase in efficacy. (The first ones flickered so slow they gave you a head ache!) I assume LED do the same?
I would think that coating the outside of the plastic enclosure of the LED with a highly reflective coating EXCEPT for the very top where you want the light to be emitted from, in the direction you want the light to go, would significantly reduce the light loss in other directions, and make more of the light USEFULL.
=== Who is it that is responsible for bioluminescence? Atoms of dirt could never do it. Your organic computer brain didn't come from dirt. Abiogenesis didn't do it since atoms can not self assemble into your brain from dirt. === Evolution = Self Assembling Atoms = Impossible === Revelation 4 : 11 “You are worthy, Jehovah our God, to receive the glory and the honor and the power, because you created all things, and because of your will they came into existence and were created.” =
The last part has already been proven to be obvious and predictable. Once mass produced LED's became mainstream with their superior efficiency, the amount of light pollution sky rocketed. We didnt reduce the power expended on light, instead we used the same amount of power to produce vastly more light. End result has been a significant decrease in insect life. Bring out these vastly more efficient LED's and the same thing is going to happen.
Unfortunately the higher efficiency of LEDs will always lead to higher demand, hence will always create more light pollution, and will never save any energy. This rule, “efficiency will lead to higher demand”, also called the Jevons Paradox. This is already true for the switch from incandescent light bulbs to LEDs. We simply light up more stuff. This is not intended to discredit the amazing efficiency gain and the value of the research. It amazing and there’s no reason to not put this tech into production. But in the end to not increase light pollution as well as potentially energy consumption you would have to implement legal frameworks to intentionally stifle the neoclassical growth model, but this is a completely different topic not worth getting into here.
Humans are diurnal, and we like light, the more, the better... But, it might be nice if we would consider the broader environmental aspects of light, and do more to control "light pollution"... I'm beginning to think that a lot of light pollution is, in fact, caused by advertising, and by sloppy application, by "cheap" products... There is quite a bit of work going into better light distribution from outdoor lighting, but there's more to do, and, as can be seen in pictures of cities, a lot to be done in reducing "escaping light", like selective reflection, or controllable reflection of windows... allowing non-infrared sunlight in, during the day, but reflecting visible wavelengths back into buildings at night. One problem that is difficult to solve is the reflection of street and pedestrian lighting back into the sky/environment. Part of the difficulty in pedestrian lighting is that, for people to feel safe, the general area needs to be illuminated, rather than illumination of just the "needed" area. It's quite possible to do "smarter" illumination along pedestrian paths, but that leaves areas in front, and behind, in relative darkness, with a decrease in the sense of well-being... Sadly, part of that is "social", with different countries, even different areas in a city, having a different sense of "inherent safety"... Strangely, then, quite a bit of light pollution could be said to be due to social factors, rather than scientific or technical factors... Sigh...
I have been using Philips LED lights everywhere for two years, they have an efficiency of 210 lumens/watt and a 5-year warranty. If its will be much better, with a warranty of many years, we can return to it...
At around the 9 minute mark you confuse a shallow angle with a steep one. Two additional things playing a major role for the efficiency: the refractive index inside an insect is certainly much lower than in a semiconductor, making extraction easier. Also, the spectrum of the light is very important. If you want peak lumen per watt, you need green light, as that's where our eyes are most sensitive. I doubt that many people would use that to light their homes, though.
This is weird... I could have sworn I read something eerily similar at least a decade ago. However the story was a little different - the scientists had come up with some sort of interesting internal structure that allowed them to make LEDs drastically brighter by reducing internal absorption. I think it was said that this was what enabled the "superbright" LEDs that are today used in all lighting applications. And then, a few years later, that same structure was discovered on some butterfly wings, which allowed them to reflect light at night way better. Unfortunately I cannot find this story now... Does it ring a bell to anyone?
You will have recorded this in front of a camera with an extremely bright light ring. The lighting in your room is diffuse but very bright. Increasing efficacy of LEDs is worthwhile but you hit the nail on the head that we need to encourage lower light output. Having travelled to Asia regularly, I can tell you that lights (particularly advertising hoardings) will only ever get brighter and architectural lighting will only grow in area and brightness. We need responsible lighting at night to illuminate what needs to be and leave everything else dark.
Great! So where can I get me some of these new fangled biomimetic LEDs? Apparently AliExpress doesn't yet sell them. Are they going to be super expensive because of the patent, in which case no thanks?
At 11:00 you say we will use the increased efficiency of these lights to reduce power needs. Just yesterday I was driving at night around the city noting how everything is much more illuminated because the already installed lighting posts got equipped with new LED luminaries that are much much brighter so I am not so sure that what you say will hold true for this technology. Thanks for the video!
It's nice to have some backstory, but it would be better to have a summary of the development right up front. Sometimes I just don't want to hear all the wind up, I just want the payoff. 👍
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Thanks to Anker for supporting this video! Check out the Anker SOLIX X1 and request a free quote at ankerfast.club/ZirothWithX1 ! I have put chapters in the video in case you want to skip around. Where do you see this innovation being best used?
In making short to the point videos.
Hey Ziroth! The SOLIX system sounds interesting, but do you have an explanation of the marketing terms they use ("Thermal boosting", "InfiniPower", "Barrel Effect")? The web page doesn't go into any technical detail, which makes it sound like pure marketing without any technical meaning, but I'd love to be proven wrong.
Could you please make a video about this fluorescent solar panels made by this student from the Philippines?
Sod off with your scam, thinks it's smart, dodgy powerbank system.
Nickel Iron batteries are all we ever needed or wanted. No computers need apply. Last a century, PROVEN. And will never catch fire.
Not Patent able of course. Still available for critical industrial, military, ship, aircraft use. And home off grid power systems.
Fro. China. US battery makers killed US manufacture in the 1970s. Cause they didn't like high energy density batteries that are cheap to make, safe and last several lifetimes.
Yeah I've seen this concept at least 4 years ago but applied to solar panels. Light goes in and very little is reflected out. Graphene is used as the building block.
skip to 6 minutes
Perfect
Thanks
Thank you
Thanks
Thanks
The irregular edges of the firefly cuticle makes me think of a Fresnel lens.
That was my first thought! There must be something to that, they could use much smaller packaging and still get that directionality, even with the large LEDs used in spotlights.
Yarp. Fresnel lens caps/covers for LEDs have been around a while. Not sure why they're not more widely used. I remember in my high school days being fascinated by the classrom overhead projecter and its Fresnel lens.
Bingo! I thought the same thing at first, but the distortion that is created by a Fresnel lens creates some distortion See my stand alone comment.
I knew they looked familiar
Except it's not a lens. Making outer surface less conducive to internal reflection improves the amount of light that escapes, but it becomes extremely diffused - the opposite of a lens.
Quite fascinating. Remember the invention of the blue L.E.D. changed the world as we know it.
Yes, I suspect you're referring to the development GaN (gallium nitride), which gave us superbrite blue LEDS, ~1993. Cree actually made SiC (silicon carbide) blue LEDs, in the mid 1980s. I remember them first sold for over $50 each, ~1985. The price dropped to under a buck ~1990, and I actually designed them into a product, at that time. In 1994 I was calling in an routine order to Digi-key, which included the Cree product, and found that all their LED products had been pulled. Later I found out, it was due to the introduction of the new GaN LEDs , coming out of Japan. Shortly there after bright blue LEDs where everywhere !
This also was the breakthrough that made LED tech for illumination, possible, and finally killed the incandescent lamp. Well, after ~20 years of ramp up.
@@michaelmoorrees3585 Absolutely right, all achieved by a lone Japanese scientist as I recall.
Yes, and they left out the original inventor of the led from the Nobel prize. 🤨
@@Tight4Skin That’s awful. It was a world game changer and he achieved it on his own.
You lazy wankers talk all around the inventor of the Blue LED but never mention the name of the person or the company: Shuji Nakamura of Nichia Corporation
Nice side effect: Much better cooling. If the waste heat can be significantly reduced, liftime of led bulbs could be extended considerably, since most fail due to the leds cooking the drive electronics.
It could also bring another leap in tiny flashlights. Those are often limited in runtime on higher levels by the temperature rise and not by the batterie. With the more efficiant leds, a significantly higher continous light output could be achived.
This could also mean that the new output efficiency requirement the US government has put in place won't have to take out full spectrum lighting!!! 🤯
more refractive surfaces to create more light is not a new concept...just our ability to work well with tinier stuff has.... car blinkers...bike reflectors...road signs... diamond rings...glitter in paint... all use this technology
and a better light blub only runs the old light bulb company out of business....
a tiny beam of light pointed at a diamond with proper angles cut could light a room like some indiana jones scene
You mean that the lifetime of bulbs would remain exactly the same while manufacturing costs drop considerably... Do you think that every LED bulb on the market being severely overdriven is an oversight?
@@Bobo-ox7fj They're not cheaper or longer lasting, just more efficient. They produce more light with the same amount of electricity. This means very marginal reduction of power grid load from using fewer bulbs, which power companies don't oppose (the same way they didn't oppose LED bulbs, and back in the day they even gave away short lifespan high efficiency incandescent bulbs for free). And this means substantial increase in battery lifetime for portable illumination devices, which they'll gladly take even if these LEDs are way more expensive.
How about stuff like OLED screens?@@michaelbuckers
I always find it remarkable how much of our innovation is copying what is already there in nature and wild life and then repurposing it for our own needs.
Well, in the end its all physics.
Nature had billions of years to try and fail and try again.
;-)
It's all proof of the absurdity of the atheism argument.
@@CommodoreGreg kinda
but reminder that the natural world had a LOT more time
Evidence that God is the best designer there is 😊
@@teddycook1299 So who designed God? And if your answer is "no one, he just exists on his own", then that answers nothing.
This is game changing for so many technologies that rely on LEDs; from light bulbs to TVs and especially VR headset that require a lot of light to show enough detail.
Another possible avenue for innovation this biomimetic design can have is in solar panels. Since LEDs and solar panels are designed, produced and function similarly except in the opposite direction of work, maybe it's possible to increase their efficiency in energy generation using a similar technique to this.
The next generation of LED grow lights are going to be insane!!! 🌅🔥
The only problem here is the optical transmission efficiency of the substrate being used, The principle is sound on the surface, but the difference in light absorption at productive angles and wavelength pass-thru may be needed to get the higher efficiencies that they are talking about in the output of LEED light. But yes, you are thinking about this constructively.
Engineered texturing is already a major topic in solar panel research. Most normal current industry standard glass faced solar panels are really quite shiny when viewed from the right angle to the sun. Thats bad. All that light should become electrons, not glare. Antireflexive techniques, smaller profile current collectors, a lot can be done to reduce this.
Dodging the cs flash irl gonna get meta 🔥🔥
@@Zonkotron Solar panels are already coated in anti-glare compound. It's a complete no-brainer considering that any reflected light is a straight loss of power. The outer surface must be smooth in order to prevent dust buildup, which is a lot worse for efficiency than small amount of leftover reflectivity.
Commercial providers having been sandblasting their sapphire substrates for years. So this is a minor evolution. But it's worth pointing out that the refractive index changes between the firefly optic medium (n=1.4) and air (n=1) is a lot less than for sapphire (n=1.7) and gallium nitride (n=2.1). It is that much larger difference that makes internal reflections in LEDs so bad.
Or to put it in terms that a RF person would use they need to do better impedance matching.😉
First knowledgeable comment . 👍 This could have made the original video more interesting and given me another place to start looking for more info.
It took a very long time to get to the point.
In Canada, Incandescent bulbs can actually be nearly 100% efficient for 6 months out of the year.
More like 3 months these days.
@@hardcoreherbivore4730What is the heating season in the Yukon? It is surely six months plus.
@@man_at_the_end_of_time Not really, the Yukon is pretty this time of year. My heat is currently shut off.
However, heat pumps would still be a multiple more efficient than using light bulbs to heat your home.
I remember sitting close to my lamp when studying just to stay warm. LEDs don't have that benefit.
Just as an historic reference, the first LEDs, as a product, came out in the late 1960s. The first LEDs I bought, were in 1973, and made by Motorola. They are RED, and very dim. LEDs bright enough, and much more efficient, to replace other forms of illumination (other than just being used as indicators, or numeric displays) was caused by the GaN (gallium nitride) revolution, starting ~1993.
Anything that can make LEDs even more efficient is almost unbelievable, considering how far the tech has gone, so far.
For those who hobby, in electronics, LEDs will emit visible light over a much wider power range than old style incandescents. A 120V (any wattage) incandescent will barely glow with 20V applied (6:1 range). Where as an LED rated for 20mA will still output quite a bit of light well under 1mA. Still quite visible well under 100uA (0.1mA, >200:1 range).
I remember earlier LEDs being such energy hogs. To get an reasonably improved battery life (for cave exploring and diving), I had to design a pulse driver circuit (the first was about 20% on/80% off, with a saw-tooth waveform) and I relied on the human eye/brain persistence effect with light to make the pulsed light "look" like a continuously ON light. Fellow cavers and divers were amazed at how long 2 alkaline "C" cells would keep a bright light going...much longer than in the incandescent flashlights we used in common (some group buys) and with what appeared to be the equivalent output.
It is rediculous, with what littke power leds still produce usable light. I've build keyfobs with two ag0 button cells (~10mAh) that have an led running at 2μA for a year. And they are bright enough to find in a dark room. At 20μA (~0.00005 W) they are bright enough to make out words on a page. And another light build with 3x D cell batteries running at 0.125 mA / ~ 0.0003W is bright enout to illuminate a small hallway at night so that one doesn't trip ). All while being able to glow for ~5 years continously.
@@clockworkvanhellsing372 I use a boost converter for white LEDs @ 10mA - my wife likes the brightness. 100 Hrs with two AAs. 10 years flashing (every second - find it in the dark) on the same batteries.
I was experimenting with making voltage/current controlled resistors recently (that I will be usning for upcoming projects). One way to do it, that's simple and work well is to put an LED next to a photoresistor and close them off from ambient light (I put them inside a small piece of aluminium tube and sealed the ends with black hot melt glue - with just the leads sticking out). I was surpriced how little current the LED needed for the resistance to drop significantly.
Just running like 20-40 uA thru the LED gave the same resistance as having the photoresistor just sitting in a well lit room.
Then when I tested to run about the same current thru another LED of the same bunch that I bought and just having having it free in the room - it was glowing really brightly at that current. Even at like 5-8 uA, it's still visible in daylight.
Those are green LEDs (which I chosed because the photo resistors I use have their peak sensitivity between green and yellow - about 540-560 nm).
@@Speeder84XL I've tested quite a few colours. Red, yellow and orangenare still behind and only glow visible at ~20μA. Green ones are okay and everything based on a blue led + phosphore coating will be quite bright even at 1μA. 2μA lets you make out words on a page.
Nice to see others experimenting with verry low currents and leds
Interesting but for me the first 5 minutes can be skipped. the introduction is tool long. thanks for this video!
Thanks for the feedback! I'll look at how best to consolidate parts and make sure the value from the video is delivered quicker 😀
@@ZirothTech I saw the same feedback at least 10 times in the comments. I watched another video from your channel that had the same issue. And finally I removed your channel from my recommended. It's so bad it's not worth the time. Sorry for being so direct.
Oh boy I can't wait for my eyes to be blasted out in the middle of the night when the blue light on some device randomly turns on
indicator lamps don't require to be brighter. This improvement still adds to the over all cost of manufacture. This tech is for LED illumination where the excess heat of over driving them shortens their life and reduces efficiency.
I get you. These will become the mass produced standard and show up in every cheap device. I recently got a new router from my ISP with green LEDs that already now cast shadows on the wall 6 m away. ^^
@@mleise8292 on my last monitor I had to put tacky over the blue light because it would be on when the monitor was plugged in and off.
@@carlm1595also means that they can be driven with less power for the same output... equalling power saving and longer run times (assuming batteries)
Good also for street lights... same power but more brightness.
In NZ where they replaced the old halogen lights... the smaller side street lights suck and you have dark areas where there were none before.
They halted the rollout to see what could be done to address it. But I don't know if they found a solution.
At the very least no retrofitting for existing replaced lights.
Lol the efficiency increasing doesn't stop variable output LEDs from existing.
so... reverse the angled shape and put them on solar cells so that they get more light into them?
Only to wear out faster? No thanks! Solar cells do wear out over time. So their output drops after about 25 years.
Yeah, and have them on your roof to trap dirt and dust much faster. Maybe in space this would be a good idea, but it's not going to work on earth with devices with lifetimes hugely longer than fireflies.
I doubt that would work simply because most of the light hitting panels is coming from a single orientation. These structures work for LEDs because the photons are reaching the interface from a wide variety of angles.
LEDs have come a huge way in terms of watts/lumen ratio and passed the incandescent stuff long ago but to think they can improve a lot more is exciting! They are even becoming a thing in video projectors which was a predominantly hallide lamp powered device!
"They are even becoming a thing in video projectors which was a predominantly hallide lamp powered device"
Lasers entered the chat.....
@@mnomadvfx hell yeah!
Hello random viewer! Here's a hint to skip annoying filling sections:
1. watch intro 0:00
2. Skip to 6:12
If they can now achieve 90% efficiency, imagine how much less power usage that would translate to in cell phones. The majority of battery life is consumed by the screen on time.
this is spesifically for LED bulb, not smth like OLED or any other screen technology. it could be translatable, but it's not the same thing and could need time to adapt. This will apply to bigger display though like advertisement screen on highrise building
@aronseptianto8142 OLED makes use of LED right? The O in OLED being organic.
every screen commonly used today uses LEDs whether they're organic or not, this could mean a lot for more than just phones
@@irokpe6977 yeah but it's made with a different method, which may or may not make things complicated.
@@aronseptianto8142The method of production isn't the issue here, it's about getting the light produced (whether from LEDs or OLEDs) out in a more efficient manner. Even if they can't directly integrate the biomemetic design during the production of the OLED, the can still implement it in the surrounding lens/diffuser that encapsulates it.
White LEDs also have conversion efficiency of the phosphor.
LED night vision, the size of sunglasses? Yes please!
When we move off Earth, I have a feeling that our vegetable gardens will use LED lights. Even a one percent gain in efficiency would make a big difference, so this size of effect is simply huge!
I'm down for that. I love a good COB light with high efficacy.
water and nutrients to grow plant based food are going to be the bigger challenges but light is going to also be a factor. Some studies have proven that mimicking the light of seasonal growth with accounting for the gradual increase and decrease of light on the plant sustains a better fruit and seeds for next generation natural food growth. The only other challenge to overcome by far is the space to grow the food and the energy to maintain a sustainable system. These things look easy in Hollywood productions but when scaled to meet the needs of a ship capable of even traveling to our nearest neighboring star becomes problematic, and then when it comes to something so vital, you would absolutely want at least N+1 redundancy. Water if used for radiation shielding for the ship and recycling that would be a place to start, but we don't know the long-term effects of water that has been continuously bombarded with high energy cosmic rays which at a minimum would cause ionization of the water, but could also cause radiolysis of the water molecules into hydrogen an hydroxyl radicals. This water which is most likely not pure H2O could then react with other molecules like minerals in the water to form other various chemical reactions that could be detrimental to the ship inhabitants or may possibly be detrimental to the ship's systems in the form of corrosive or caustic effects. It would be great to just have one of those replicators from Star Trek onboard for spare parts, a cup of Earl Grey or even capable of replicating spare parts but we are far from that capability, and being prepared with at least N+1 spare parts for a ship capable of making it to the Alpha Centauri system is estimated to take the space of at least 1/3 to 1/2 the size of the living working spacecraft and systems, Space exploration is a conundrum fraught with great promise, but it also comes with some very high risks and costs. I'm confident enough in my education and knowledge to say a manned trip to Mars in the next 20-50 years is nearly impossible due to the duration and tight requirements. Any attempt should be questioned and only very cautiously encouraged. Any consideration should firstly be met with multiple mechanical system successes before any human attempt is made.
pipe dreams
I use LED bulbs now to grow food indoors and also outside under the edge of my camper roof at night to triple the growth rate of tomato plants in simply 5 gallon hydro buckets. A 10 watt LED bulb can work wonders. I also have 15, 24, and 36 watt ones and various types built into narrow rails or round panels. You can grow tomatoes and even cucumbers inside all year and of course a wide range of smaller herbs and salad greens and even citrus trees. It`s a fun and productive hobby and a much less expensive and safer way to get your lettuces for salads and sandwiches. It`s fun to grow the weird little micro dwarf tomatoes or even large varieties of determinate tomato plants and it`s exciting to experiment and develop new or improved methods.
now can this be used on solar pannels for better results?... that's the real question!...
That's what occurred to me too! I credit you for seeing it first though ;-)
I don't think so. For solar panels you need to focus the light, not scatter it
@@mikosoftThe idea of applying a microstructure to minimize reflection of sunlight (and maximize abortion) should be useful, though
No, simply no. they are not even close to having any problems with reflecting light.
The angle of incidence is very important in solar panels. It's not about making them more efficient, it is about making them work for more hours of the day. Early morning and late afternoon where the angle of incidence prevents most light from entering the panel. There has been a lot of work done in this area but each has its drawbacks. This may work better than other attempts.
There is a possible solution with graphene to. a single layer of graphene is water proof so just a few layers would give adequate replacement for the current resins ,but with a huge increase in photon escape . But who knew the original designer would have a great way to maximize light emission efficiency !?.
I wish this video was meant for science enthusiasts that have basic knowledge about science, and condensed into 2 minutes instead of drawn out almost 12 and with a long commercial plug.
Yes please. On x2 it was still too slow
Yes!!!!
Gawd so much was filler. But hey, surely that's the life of a TH-camr nowadays. He's probably optimising some metric because of the data presented to him from other videos.
Stop whinging😂
I actually watched the sponsor ad all the way this time, Anker. Finally a battery that will kill the Powerwall.
Super interesting! Can always take inspiration from nature
So they increased the extraction efficiency by 55% to 90%, which almost doubles the total light extraction? Nice! :-)
Could this same surface treatment be used in the production of solar panels to increase the efficiency of light reaching the cells?
I reckon it could. The way that light photon escaped. It's just a revesed action. You're now taking in light. Rather than, beaming out photons. And that refraction layer looks to be practically symmetrical.
The front page algorithm has had a lot of misses for me but this channel is an absolute hit. Subscribed.
Fascinating how nature again informs us to make what we make batter.
(Opinion: The first ~7 minutes needed a lot of editing. Could have been 3 minutes.)
Then how is he going to hit the TH-cam "recommend" 10 minute mark
@@wanderingrock6756 With a little work, if he wants, he could describe the way the current LEDs direct the light in one direction with the shape of the metal parts you can see in a plain 2-lead though-hole type. He can get details from those knowledgeable of the insects and the (caloric?) energy they expend to produce that fascinating little flash of light. (etc.) ...not fill time with sloppy images and repetitive copy. Doing THAT, he risks losing the audience before the really interesting information he provides in the second half of this video.
Biomimetics has been a deep area of interest in all the sciences for decades.
From the moment the scientific community acknowledged natural selection and genetics it became a given that natures own crucible could create the ideal solution for just about anything.
For example, metasurfaces exist now as a field of study due to studying how light changes when reflecting off a butterflys wings.
Brighter and brighter and brighter and brighter and BLINDINGLY BRIGHTER LEDS!!!!!!!!
Our highways today are rife with LEDs that create safety hazards for oncoming motorists, cyclists and pedestrians. How is that sharing the road?
@@rickofnsHow do they create hazards?
Brighter means higher efficiency - you can have the same brightness for lower power and longer lifetimes.
@@rickofns
No more hazardous than the lights that existed before.
It's about default intensity rather than what is being used.
@@mnomadvfx For me its much harder to see with the light spectrum that they produce. And I have a harder time driving in nighttime snowfall with my led headlights.
Very clear. Loved the science 😊
Please add a section on the companies that are converting the ideas into saleable product as investors and potential customers viewing your great video could help bridge the gap between good ideas and viable production!
breaking symmetry in LEDs is a very old idea. see 1998 patent 5,779,924 that one uses a truncated pyramid shape with sharp angles just like the firefly idea. There have been many more ideas since.
Luminus efficient is also related to humain vision according to color, it peaks near 555 nm (green), impossible to get 100% with white light!
I guess I just need to rough up the outer surface of my LEDs (randomly) with some coarse sandpaper to increase the escaping non-reflected light. Maybe.
Most of us are just happy with the efficiency of our LED illumination over CFL technology, not to mention filament bulbs.
Getting more light for the already low energy input/consumption of our LEDs... is not a big issue for even those of us living 100% on solar energy.
We're more likely to use PWM to dim our illumination rather than wonder, "How can I get this dim light brighter?"
Very interesting look at an approach for improving light extraction. A recurring flaw in this video, though, is repeatedly showing 1990s-era 3mm plastic-coated leaded LEDs. That is just not how the serious LED lighting revolution has progressed -- it required surface-mounted, much higher power LEDs that in the last decade started exceeding 50% total efficacy including light extraction. There is doubtless further room for improvement, and even small gains are highly beneficial as the light per heat ratio increases wildly as you progress beyond 50% efficacy; but it is important to keep the opportunity for further efficiency gains in perspective.
"The light pollution problem isn't due to the technology, it's about how we use it"
Well said. But do you really think we will not spread more efficient LEDs everywhere, now that we'll got them ? And, like someone says in the comment, "turn night into day" ?
We're already turning winter in summer, I guess this is the next logical step...
Unfortunately the most difficult part of reducing energy usage is humans. Like you said, if we can run brighter and cheaper lights then we will be more likely to have more lights and have them on more often. I would hope that they are mainly used just for replacing existing lights and using less power though.
A potential massive improvement due to this is torches, it could be used to make the torches last longer on a single battery or to make them brighter, both of which would be very good.
just skip to 7:45, you're welcome YT 😙
What if you can use that technique of light extraction efficiency in reverse on solar panels to extract almost all photons from the sun to make the efficiency upto 90% like they did to the A symmetric surface of the LED.
I fail to understand why you don't have millions of subscribers ... you're very good at this!
cause he repeats himself a lot, it's totally understandable, the man need to hit the 10 min mark, but still
@@aronseptianto8142 yea he rambled on for over 7 min before even says what the breakthrough is. And its jagged edges. Which I can say in one short sentence.
Educational stuff does not attract many people like monkey videos
@@lordmaddog6003 time to start you 1 minute TH-cam channel - I'm sure you'll be a great success.
The introduction of the blue LED was an important step forward because added to red and green LEDs makes the white light. This meant they could be used for large scale general illumination. Especially for street lighting, vehicles and buildings.
The efficiency of LEDs has played a bit part in reducing the electricity demand from power grids. This can be measured.
So if these Bio-inspired LEDs realise the efficiencies suggested, the power demand for lighting may further reduce and we will need less power stations and avoid the damage they do to the environment.
This is a GOOD thing!
However, if the development of the blue LED is an indication, it will take a decade or two to for such an innovation to find its way from laboratory demonstrations to general deployment in a high volume applications such as street lighting. If the economics are favourable, it will surely happen. It is pretty easy to measure the cost of electricity for lighting.
Just a note, white leds are not made by combining red, green and blue. They use phosphorus coating to emit white light.
Another example of innovators getting pushed out by greedy corporations. #giveAllMoneyToFireflies
Video starts at 7:51, thank me in the comments 😂
Couldn't this be used in reverse to increase the amount of light absorbed by solar panels making them more effective for more hours of the day
Nice video and great explanation. I would recommend making the video shorter with less repetition.
If the fire fly structures help to get light out of an LED, could it help a solar panel to capture more light ?
GE, of course, has been working on a similar technologies for years. 30% or so more efficient than LEDs. really neat. pretty sure it was GE
With that patent in place, I don't expect this tech to be widely accessible nor affordable for at least 10 years or so. But it's an interesting and important finding, nonetheless!
you really made sure to stretch the video for as long as you possibly could with this snippet of info you got
Great article but too wordy. You finally get to the point at 7:5 minutes in.
The jagged ridges remind me of that of Fernal lenses
I remember when we didn't have LED's at all. 🙂
The invention of the Red LED was a really major breakthrough.
The really cool kids got to play with green and yellow. You couldn't see them very well in ambient light, but they were still cool!
Blue is what changed the world tho
The introduction of the blue LED was an important step forward because added to red and green LEDs makes the white light. This meant they could be used for large scale general illumination. Especially for street lighting, vehicles and buildings.
The efficiency of LEDs has played a bit part in reducing the electricity demand from power grids. This can be measured.
So if these Bio-inspired LEDs realise the efficiencies suggested, the power demand for lighting may further reduce and we will need less power stations and avoid the damage they do to the environment.
This is a GOOD thing!
However, if the development of the blue LED is an indication, it will take a decade or two to for such an innovation to find its way from laboratory demonstrations to general deployment in a high volume applications such as street lighting. If the economics are favourable, it will surely happen. It is pretty easy to measure the cost of electricity for lighting.
Wtf you talking about? Everything you've listed has been decades out of the lab and in the widespread use.
Wow, I totally understand this because I have studied and worked in the fiber optics manufacturing sector for nearly four decades now. We use many of these same properties for efficiently transmitting light first into the core of the fiber by being less than the numerical aperture and refractive index for the light entering the cone or angle of incidence, I.e., Snell's Law. And what will work for light going in, should work or can be applied to light coming out, provided there is no polarization changes or chromatic dispersion which could cause some light to be diffused. Fascinating, but I'm really struggling why this took so long to come to light (no pun intended) as it all is mainly the practically we have been striving for in the efficiency of getting light into fibers more effectively to have better amplification in long distance transmission regen and amplification systems. Perhaps this will translate into more optically effective lens packaging for precision switching optical transceivers.
It's been patented, so we need to wait 15 years to find out.
Reminds me of a rather old technology, and that's the use of Fresnel lenses on lighthouses.
So, in retrospect, solar panels could be made in a similar way where the structure is mapped, to trap as many photons that are incoming instead of allowing them to be reflected and escape. Both LED and solar, have very similar technical trates.
That means better light receivers for laser technology communications. More internet band width too.
This is huge news, will save a lot of money and CO2.
If algorithm sent you here he does not get to the breakthrough to 7:00 so just jump to that.
When I was a kid back in like 1996 I told my older sister "LEDs are the future". She laughed. I've had to remind her a few times since then😅
This reminds me of how moth eyes worth to reduce glare.
Can you stop saying nothing with a lot of words? Lmao
LED Light bulbs are sold as 60W equivilant and similar ratings so if we get more efficiant LED's there will be hardly any more pollution, Yeah it will make some extream LED's more powerfull but who really uses those on a daily bases only in stadiums and stuff similar, it will be great to have this new LED's, Lighting will be extreamly cheap, My house is currently filled with LIFX Smart LED Light bulbs and I hardly notice them on my energy monitor as is
Their problem wasn't that they didn't have enough light, but that they are waaaaaaaaaaay too bright and damaging to eyes. Leaving a blinding afterglow in the form of stripes and arrays of dots. People with astigmatism literally can't go on the streets safely anymore. The orange sodium glow is less visible so it's also less hindering to people with astigmatism, but white and blue leds will overlay an opaque layer over everything.
Oncoming traffic sometimes forces me to just stop because I can't see anything. Glasses don't help against astigmatism either, it requires risky surgery.
its just the color temperature of them. The eyes are much more sensitive to blue light and so the warmer yellow orange of old incandesant or halogen bulbs was much less blinding when its dark outside.
There needs to simply be a regulation making car headlights a warmer colour instead of pure and blinding white.
This is a great point, I touched on this briefly at the end of the video! I think we shouldn't be using this breakthrough to increase their brightness, but instead reduce the amount of energy needed for the same amount of light (or in fact less light in many places!).
I have no particular eye problem but I often half close my eyes and look to the left maintaining less than efficient vision when confronted with a BMW or a stupid electric contraption coming the other way. Last night, having spent nearly 14 hours on a taxi, train, RyanAir (Sevilla-Nightmare Stansted), Greater Anglia, the London Underground with its' stupid and confusing oystercards (It has been 49 years since I last experienced the London Underground and if I can avoid it, it will be the last, but it was the only way that we could get to the last coach home from Victoria (RyanAir deliberately time their flights and from the far end of the terminals to be as inconvenient as possible. Having passed security, Aeropuerto de Sevilla advise 13 minutes walk to Terminal C) ), we were confronted with a 3 mile walk home. Part of the walk is on UNLIT footpaths away from the road (supposedly for the delight of the walking public. There is one long section of pavement where we walked in the opposite direction to oncoming traffic on a long one-way sliproad. There was a full moon and light enough to see where we were going except when L.E.D. lit cars came towards obliterating our sight of the pavement, and when pulling a case, the last thing you want is to run the wheels through dog shit. The cars with proper lights helped to light the pavement.
Having put the cases and bags in the house, we drove to a huge Tesco Open 6 a.m. -12 Midnight, 8-9 miles away, arriving at 10.20 p.m. to find all but the food section was closed off. No lettuce, no strawberries. The was a scattering of single bananas that either had split skins or were bruised to hell. I prevailed upon a member of staff to get another box or two of bananas making it clear that we were not going to waste money on rubbish. We got some nice pears and didn't want anything else but there were many other huge spaces where there wasn't any product. There were a few non-perishables that we wanted were not there. We then found that there were no proper tills open - only the self service monstrosities. My beloved insisted that we use it and the bill came to just over £56. My beloved scanned everything whilst I watched the painfully slow process and then, obediently, when told, I presented my Tesco credit card to the payment terminal. Nothing happened. "Now you have to do it again". "What ?" That was just for the Clubcard points ... NOW you can pay. >>>>> "MY CHRIST ! "
@@terryhoath1983 Try to remember Tesco employees are regular people without power, and you impact their wellness by how you act. There's a high chance you were rude out of frustration. I trust that was unintentional, but the effect [edit removed: affect] is the same in any case. More efficient LEDs will not fix this.
@@Psrj-ad absolutely. The blinding white (or even worse, the green, blue, or purple headlights (why?!?!?!)) are just excessive.
I can't wait for these more efficient LEDs to hit the markets!
Fireflies ≠ glow worms. Fireflies live outside, glow worms live in caves. Completely different creatures.
This work was completed a long time ago
im sitting in a room where i have all me led lights on devices covered. they are bright enough lol
now that they've patented what the firefly uses to solve this problem it's certain this idea will disappear before it's even able to be used, how do you patent a naturally occurring phenomenon -_-. I really wish patents and copyright only lasted 5~20 years sigh.
Are they looking to flip this and see the impact for solar cells?
I think that Matt fellow showed a piece on this a little while back. I know it was some efficiency boost using new layer tech...
@@justinpatterson5291 oOo.. who is the Matt fellow, appreciate the connect
@@justinpatterson5291 Curios to see if this leads to more compact high power lasers for use in photonic chips
@@thewatersavior Might be 'Undecided with Matt Ferrell'
Why do you spend 11 minutes to say what could have been said in two minutes?
To jusify selling advert in middle of it. He has to eat like everyone.
Makes me wonder if the same serrated effects can enhance solar panel efficiency
Can't anymore. It's patented, you can't violate the patent. See the problem?
The point of the video is from 8:00 to 8:30
Could this work to make solar panels capture more light from the sun?
7:10 to skip to the interesting part.
I Have noticed some Leds last a while and some fail sooner than incandescent bulbs. So if this technology can use less energy to produce the same amount of light and also make the life span longer than its a win win.
A common problem with LED bulbs is the way they dissipate heat. Many of the closed bulb designs traps in a lot of heat and it is often this heat that causes them the fail prematurely.
What a simple idea. Yet so efficient.
Why do we keep getting advances in lights, but not like anything else lol.....................
Fusion? nah
Solar? Meh
Hvac? Maybe
Medical breakthroughs? LOL NOPE
LED LIGHTS????????? YEAH BRO I CAN GET YOU AN LED LIGHT THAT LASTS 50 YEARS IS CHEAP AND COSTS NOTHING TO RUN!!!!!!!!!!!!
I mean I'll take it.......
But Couzin - what we doing about ' ethical LEDs ' - WE are blinding OURSELVES.
' ...Do not look directly into the sun... ' but beaming UNshielded LEDs is a contemporary problem no one is addressing !🍀
I wonder if this could work in reverse to make solar panels capture more light.
The explanation starts at 7:00
The claim of 30% efficiency (01:20) is too low. The maximum possible luminous efficacy for a white light source with a CRI in between 80 and 90 is 350-400 Lumens per Watt.
White LEDs over 300 Lumens per Watt have ALREADY been demonstrated, years ago.
Highly educational and thought provoking as always. You have a great channel. Also appreciate an introduction to the Anker SOLIX X1. I had no idea Anker had such devices. Thank you
The other reason LED bulbs are not as efficient as they could be is simply heat. IE a lot of lights run the LEDs at their maximum power rating as this uses less LEDs and reduces life of the bulb. Specifically they are designed to fail. Reduce a 15W led bulb to 6W by increasing the current sense resistor and it will give as much light as a 7.5W LED bulb. Not only that, it will run up to 40C cooler. That alone can extend the life by a factor of 100. IE 200,000 hours instead of 2000. That is 238 years in the lab. That assumes switching on the point in the cycle that is zero volts. In the real world 15 years is easily achieved.
This was fascinating and your delivery was flawless! You are a natural teacher.
Sure, no problem. LEDs are supposed to last what... 50k hours in their current design?
But the circuit board they're installed on is *DESIGNED* (intentionally) to fail after 1500 hours or less.
Like so many advocates of new technology, you have tunnel vision. All you care about is efficiency. Does it occur to you that the energy lost by incandescent bulbs is not always wasted? It used to be common for people to sit under a warm incandescent bulbs reading a book or watching TV. They were comfortable. Now, if you are cold, you have to turn up the thermostat for the whole floor of your house! So how much energy did the conversion to LED save?
Did you know that the shutdown of the production lines for high wattage incandescent bulbs also eliminated the manufacture of lower wattage and indicator bulbs for countless kinds of equipment? How much energy will be used to replace this equipment? One example. - my mother's oven required a special brass based 40w incandescent bulb. No LED or florescent bulb would work. After the ban, these bulbs disappeared from the market. They were not available online. I put 100 miles on my car trying to find one of these bulbs, for my mother's otherwise excellent condition oven. I finally found a couple in the dusty corner of an old Mom and Pop hardware store. All the while people were telling me I should just buy my mother a new oven. Besides the cost, do you have any idea how much energy it takes to roll the steel for a new oven, or bake the ceramic coating on? Do you have any idea of the energy requirements to dispose of the old oven and the environmental consequences? Do you have any idea how we will dispose of toxic solar panels and LED bulbs and panels? The tungsten filament in an incandescent bulbs is inert - no danger to the environment. Do you realize how much green CO2 absorbing vegetation is being destroyed by the installation of solar panel fields? Do you realize the effect on food prices? I could go on and on.
Incidentally, I worked in engineering for 42 years, and in LED backlighting of LCD panels the last 24 years of my life. The concept that irregular surfaces pass light better than smooth (reflective) surfaces is not new. We were using this concept 15 years ago, and it had nothing to do with fireflies.
Electric Aviation (another TH-cam channel) came out with a video a little while back diving into the Ornithopter from Dune, and how doable it would be in real life. I see quite a lot of parallels between this video and the Ornithopter video. The guy talked about R&D into electrically-controlled polymer-based artificial muscles. Muscles that could function (eventually) like a bird, a bat, or an insect.
I tried doing a deep dive into that, and I couldn't find much. Could you do a video looking into that?
LEDs last longer? that's weird because pretty much every light I ever bought been lasting almost shorter time than incandescent light or pretty much spot on exactly on the day as long as the 1 year warranty last or like less than 500 hours. And they cost more to buy.
I think it's unlikely that an efficiency upgrade would just make things brighter. We make things as bright as they "need" to be (need being stretched to its limits here in terms of things like headlights and advertising); nobody* says, I would make this brighter, but I'd blow my power budget. Energy efficiency just isn't the reason things are not brighter.
* I'm sure there's some counterexample, but any such things would not be common enough for them to make a noticable difference in environmental illumination
One point completely missed.
Incandescent lamps give out a continuous light.
Fluorescent lamps flicker, so you see the brightest part of the flicker, as if it were continuous. So huge increase in efficacy.
(The first ones flickered so slow they gave you a head ache!)
I assume LED do the same?
I would think that coating the outside of the plastic enclosure of the LED with a highly reflective coating EXCEPT for the very top where you want the light to be emitted from, in the direction you want the light to go, would significantly reduce the light loss in other directions, and make more of the light USEFULL.
=== Who is it that is responsible for bioluminescence? Atoms of dirt could never do it. Your organic computer brain didn't come from dirt. Abiogenesis didn't do it since atoms can not self assemble into your brain from dirt. === Evolution = Self Assembling Atoms = Impossible === Revelation 4 : 11 “You are worthy, Jehovah our God, to receive the glory and the honor and the power, because you created all things, and because of your will they came into existence and were created.” =
The last part has already been proven to be obvious and predictable. Once mass produced LED's became mainstream with their superior efficiency, the amount of light pollution sky rocketed. We didnt reduce the power expended on light, instead we used the same amount of power to produce vastly more light. End result has been a significant decrease in insect life. Bring out these vastly more efficient LED's and the same thing is going to happen.
Unfortunately the higher efficiency of LEDs will always lead to higher demand, hence will always create more light pollution, and will never save any energy.
This rule, “efficiency will lead to higher demand”, also called the Jevons Paradox. This is already true for the switch from incandescent light bulbs to LEDs. We simply light up more stuff.
This is not intended to discredit the amazing efficiency gain and the value of the research. It amazing and there’s no reason to not put this tech into production.
But in the end to not increase light pollution as well as potentially energy consumption you would have to implement legal frameworks to intentionally stifle the neoclassical growth model, but this is a completely different topic not worth getting into here.
Humans are diurnal, and we like light, the more, the better... But, it might be nice if we would consider the broader environmental aspects of light, and do more to control "light pollution"... I'm beginning to think that a lot of light pollution is, in fact, caused by advertising, and by sloppy application, by "cheap" products... There is quite a bit of work going into better light distribution from outdoor lighting, but there's more to do, and, as can be seen in pictures of cities, a lot to be done in reducing "escaping light", like selective reflection, or controllable reflection of windows... allowing non-infrared sunlight in, during the day, but reflecting visible wavelengths back into buildings at night.
One problem that is difficult to solve is the reflection of street and pedestrian lighting back into the sky/environment. Part of the difficulty in pedestrian lighting is that, for people to feel safe, the general area needs to be illuminated, rather than illumination of just the "needed" area. It's quite possible to do "smarter" illumination along pedestrian paths, but that leaves areas in front, and behind, in relative darkness, with a decrease in the sense of well-being... Sadly, part of that is "social", with different countries, even different areas in a city, having a different sense of "inherent safety"... Strangely, then, quite a bit of light pollution could be said to be due to social factors, rather than scientific or technical factors... Sigh...
I have been using Philips LED lights everywhere for two years, they have an efficiency of 210 lumens/watt and a 5-year warranty. If its will be much better, with a warranty of many years, we can return to it...
At around the 9 minute mark you confuse a shallow angle with a steep one.
Two additional things playing a major role for the efficiency: the refractive index inside an insect is certainly much lower than in a semiconductor, making extraction easier. Also, the spectrum of the light is very important. If you want peak lumen per watt, you need green light, as that's where our eyes are most sensitive. I doubt that many people would use that to light their homes, though.
This is weird... I could have sworn I read something eerily similar at least a decade ago. However the story was a little different - the scientists had come up with some sort of interesting internal structure that allowed them to make LEDs drastically brighter by reducing internal absorption. I think it was said that this was what enabled the "superbright" LEDs that are today used in all lighting applications. And then, a few years later, that same structure was discovered on some butterfly wings, which allowed them to reflect light at night way better. Unfortunately I cannot find this story now... Does it ring a bell to anyone?
You will have recorded this in front of a camera with an extremely bright light ring. The lighting in your room is diffuse but very bright.
Increasing efficacy of LEDs is worthwhile but you hit the nail on the head that we need to encourage lower light output.
Having travelled to Asia regularly, I can tell you that lights (particularly advertising hoardings) will only ever get brighter and architectural lighting will only grow in area and brightness.
We need responsible lighting at night to illuminate what needs to be and leave everything else dark.
Great! So where can I get me some of these new fangled biomimetic LEDs? Apparently AliExpress doesn't yet sell them. Are they going to be super expensive because of the patent, in which case no thanks?
At 11:00 you say we will use the increased efficiency of these lights to reduce power needs. Just yesterday I was driving at night around the city noting how everything is much more illuminated because the already installed lighting posts got equipped with new LED luminaries that are much much brighter so I am not so sure that what you say will hold true for this technology. Thanks for the video!
It's nice to have some backstory, but it would be better to have a summary of the development right up front. Sometimes I just don't want to hear all the wind up, I just want the payoff. 👍