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.
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
@@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.
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
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
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!
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!
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
@@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.
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.
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.
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.
I subscribe to a lot of science, engineering, and future green tech channels and you are the only one I've heard mention this. So good job finding a subject that hasn't been done to death.
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.
@@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.
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.
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.
On a note about incandescent bulb inefficiencies. I discovered in our recently purchased house, that an exterior flood light had been inadvertently left on for days at a time. It's a 1kwh bulb! I mean that thing is a heater that just happens to shine a bit! Swapped it out for a 30w led one.
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 it's translatable. It's also upgradable by combining certain quinone type substances. There are more efficiency gains that can be made studying cells and mitochondria for biomimmickry.
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 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.
Very interresting. Whether it will become standard will depend a lot on the added manufacturing cost though - but even if they turn out to be expensive there is a lot of utility. Right now we are limited in how bright we can produce light by energy density. Past a certain point you need big heatsinks and active cooling when as you pack diodes denser. Needing less to achieve the same lumens would be a gamechanger in many applications.
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.
Dish out the tip of a uv led. Fill it with glow n dark pigment (your choice of color) then use a timer circuit to pulse (blink) to keep the glow solidly lit your already more efficient than current led .. would work fine for most signal display applications
My understanding is that large-scale illumination from LEDs, particularly street lights, are already UV-based. Street lights are therefore both LED and fluorescent! You might have heard about this, but there was a batch of streetlight LED bulbs from some manufacturer that had a bad fluorescent coating which flaked off. Those bulbs look very purple. (You can find TH-cam videos about this.) I recently saw an entire tennis court that was lit with such defective bulbs, and at night it looked very eerie.
You are missing one important fact: The shorter the wavelength, the more energy is needed. And UV has a very short wavelength compared to the visible light. Then there is the refresh rate of the display. Could get very complicated to time all this the right way and still managing a 100Hz+ refresh rate. Notebook display are usually lit just from one side (often from the bottom) and the light is then distorted with layers of fresnel lenses, a diffusor and a slightly conical plate to distribute the amount of the light (almost XD) even. This is the reason why top corners of some displays are slightly darker than the rest ^^
When I said signal type display I was talking about instrumentation style. Think in a operators booth watching equipment status on/off there would be some fade off of course but on low speed(refresh rate)situations it seems practical . Even if the uv is a short wave it's time "on" state could be very short pulse
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.
The photo at 6:30 is of a moon jellyfish, which do not bioluminesce. They are commonly displayed in aquariums with lighting from the bottom, which interacts with their translucent bodies to light them up.
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!
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!
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?"
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.
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?
Can't wait till they put even more ultra-super-mega bright blue leds into all my home theatre equipment. I want to see those power leds, not my movie, thanks!
A very interesting video, and it's cool they're finding ways to increase the energy efficiency of our light sources, though I really think that you hit the nail on the head with the issues that an increase in brightness of LED lights can cause. I used to love driving at night, but ever since they started putting LEDs in car headlights it's become very annoying. They're so bright that I often think people have their high beams on when it's just their regular lights and when often times I'll find my night vision obliterated by the headlights of oncoming traffic. But, by far the worst is when you get a car (usually an SUV, but not always) with these kind of bright headlights come up behind you and shine them directly into your rearview mirror, and then they just sit there right on your tail despite the passing lane being perfectly empty. Seriously, someone needs to put a restriction on the amount of lumens that regular headlights are allowed to emit.
Nah, you got this all wrong - its not *when* they started putting LEDs in headlamps, its when *idiots* starting putting them there, factory lamps work just fine, and frankly prettty hard to do correctly.
Close, but not quite. Retroreflectors like the ones on bicycle spokes are usually corner reflectors, basically a mirrored interior corner of a cube. Many small corner reflectors make up the surface, reflecting out all light that enters.
@@areadenial2343 Yeah, the angle is different, the LEDs use them as a lightguide/trap forcing the light out instead of reflecting it back to it's point of origin. I'm talking about the principal of the jagged surface to direct the maximum amount of light into the desired direction.
One possible use I see for this is in mini-led type hdr displays. If you can get twice the lumens/nits per watt then an led upgrade could turn an hdr600 rated display to an hdr1000 display AND reduce power used (and cooling needed).
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.
"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...
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.
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.
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.
This also highlights how complex and beautiful this world has been created. Great Video Ryan!
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
@@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
Cooking the drive electronics and the LED material itself.
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
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.
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.
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
skip to 6 minutes
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Thanks
The front page algorithm has had a lot of misses for me but this channel is an absolute hit. Subscribed.
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!
This was fascinating and your delivery was flawless! You are a natural teacher.
Thanks!
Thank you for the donation!
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!
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
Super interesting! Can always take inspiration from nature
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.
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.
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.
You are the best. Pleasure to listen to you.
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
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.
So they increased the extraction efficiency by 55% to 90%, which almost doubles the total light extraction? Nice! :-)
I subscribe to a lot of science, engineering, and future green tech channels and you are the only one I've heard mention this.
So good job finding a subject that hasn't been done to death.
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.
White LEDs also have conversion efficiency of the phosphor.
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.
Reminds me of a rather old technology, and that's the use of Fresnel lenses on lighthouses.
Amazing content and a truly masterful presentation. Thank you so much for this insight. Naturally, I have subscribed to your channel.
brilliantly explained! Thanks, keep up the great work!
Luminus efficient is also related to humain vision according to color, it peaks near 555 nm (green), impossible to get 100% with white light!
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.
What a simple idea. Yet so efficient.
at least we can use them inside of our screens, and make it way more efficient than now. this is really fascinating!!!
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.
Hello random viewer! Here's a hint to skip annoying filling sections:
1. watch intro 0:00
2. Skip to 6:12
On a note about incandescent bulb inefficiencies. I discovered in our recently purchased house, that an exterior flood light had been inadvertently left on for days at a time. It's a 1kwh bulb! I mean that thing is a heater that just happens to shine a bit! Swapped it out for a 30w led one.
It took a very long time to get to the point.
shoutout fireflies for not only being awesome but helpful asf
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.
@aronseptianto8142 it's translatable. It's also upgradable by combining certain quinone type substances.
There are more efficiency gains that can be made studying cells and mitochondria for biomimmickry.
I can't wait for these more efficient LEDs to hit the markets!
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😅
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.
This is going to give us some amazing flashlights.
Thank you for the honest video of facts.
Fascinating stuff !
I love that LEDs have gotten so good that people don’t know when they’re using LEDs for their incandescent B-stock
it always surprises me when stuff like this hasn't been experimented or figured out earlier..
Its all been done already, op just cant be bothered to do his homework.
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.
Very interresting. Whether it will become standard will depend a lot on the added manufacturing cost though - but even if they turn out to be expensive there is a lot of utility. Right now we are limited in how bright we can produce light by energy density. Past a certain point you need big heatsinks and active cooling when as you pack diodes denser. Needing less to achieve the same lumens would be a gamechanger in many applications.
I would appreciate a sign telling up you are presenting an Ad. Thanks.
Sponsor block is your friend.
Well done, Sir!
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.
Nice video and great explanation. I would recommend making the video shorter with less repetition.
Very interesting thank you 😊
Dish out the tip of a uv led. Fill it with glow n dark pigment (your choice of color) then use a timer circuit to pulse (blink) to keep the glow solidly lit your already more efficient than current led .. would work fine for most signal display applications
My understanding is that large-scale illumination from LEDs, particularly street lights, are already UV-based. Street lights are therefore both LED and fluorescent!
You might have heard about this, but there was a batch of streetlight LED bulbs from some manufacturer that had a bad fluorescent coating which flaked off. Those bulbs look very purple. (You can find TH-cam videos about this.) I recently saw an entire tennis court that was lit with such defective bulbs, and at night it looked very eerie.
You are missing one important fact: The shorter the wavelength, the more energy is needed. And UV has a very short wavelength compared to the visible light.
Then there is the refresh rate of the display. Could get very complicated to time all this the right way and still managing a 100Hz+ refresh rate.
Notebook display are usually lit just from one side (often from the bottom) and the light is then distorted with layers of fresnel lenses, a diffusor and a slightly conical plate to distribute the amount of the light (almost XD) even. This is the reason why top corners of some displays are slightly darker than the rest ^^
When I said signal type display I was talking about instrumentation style. Think in a operators booth watching equipment status on/off there would be some fade off of course but on low speed(refresh rate)situations it seems practical . Even if the uv is a short wave it's time "on" state could be very short pulse
@@AVNwinner Oh, I see ^^ But in that case the benefit would be almost not existing, is my guess 😀
Today, I have learned something new. Thank you for your efforts, young man. Well done. I shall subscribe.
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.
Well explained, thanks
This random patter reminds me a lot of the Fresnel lens. An angled pattern in glass that was designed to enhance the light coming from a light house.
Presumably the same tech can be used to ensure that the cells in PV panels capture more of the incoming photons too,.
you really made sure to stretch the video for as long as you possibly could with this snippet of info you got
That was great, thank you.
I like this channel!
Thank you!
The photo at 6:30 is of a moon jellyfish, which do not bioluminesce. They are commonly displayed in aquariums with lighting from the bottom, which interacts with their translucent bodies to light them up.
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!
A really informative video. Thanks!
Great video mate, would be interesting to have a look at solid state batteries that can charge in seconds and last for weeks.
In the mid to late 1960's, kids in the US would collect fireflies and send them in for study. We had a ball collecting them and "helping science".
Any time you're talking about an improvement in anything, never forget to put down the common man for wanting to use lightbulbs to be able to see. 👍
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!
The jagged ridges remind me of that of Fernal lenses
Can't wait for keychain LEDs to come out with "turns Night into Day" class lighting.
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?"
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.
Also, much can be relearned by looking at Fresnel lens properties and apply them polygonally.
VERY-INTERESTING :)
THANK YOU FOR SHARING :)
THANK YOU FROM ISRAEL :)
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?
Putting biology in our tech, and tech in our biology
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?
The structural pattern of the firefly cuticle reminds me of the fresnel lens.
Total internal reflection occurs when the angle is shallow, not steep.
Thank you! Any reference papers, links please
Espectacular ! 😮😮
Can't wait till they put even more ultra-super-mega bright blue leds into all my home theatre equipment. I want to see those power leds, not my movie, thanks!
A very interesting video, and it's cool they're finding ways to increase the energy efficiency of our light sources, though I really think that you hit the nail on the head with the issues that an increase in brightness of LED lights can cause.
I used to love driving at night, but ever since they started putting LEDs in car headlights it's become very annoying. They're so bright that I often think people have their high beams on when it's just their regular lights and when often times I'll find my night vision obliterated by the headlights of oncoming traffic. But, by far the worst is when you get a car (usually an SUV, but not always) with these kind of bright headlights come up behind you and shine them directly into your rearview mirror, and then they just sit there right on your tail despite the passing lane being perfectly empty.
Seriously, someone needs to put a restriction on the amount of lumens that regular headlights are allowed to emit.
Nah, you got this all wrong - its not *when* they started putting LEDs in headlamps, its when *idiots* starting putting them there, factory lamps work just fine, and frankly prettty hard to do correctly.
That texture looks like a miniaturized version of the texture once found on the old plastic reflectors, like the ones on bicycle spoke reflectors.
Close, but not quite. Retroreflectors like the ones on bicycle spokes are usually corner reflectors, basically a mirrored interior corner of a cube. Many small corner reflectors make up the surface, reflecting out all light that enters.
@@areadenial2343 Yeah, the angle is different, the LEDs use them as a lightguide/trap forcing the light out instead of reflecting it back to it's point of origin.
I'm talking about the principal of the jagged surface to direct the maximum amount of light into the desired direction.
This is great... Can we just get rid of the ones in headlights though. 🤷🏼👀😎😣
One possible use I see for this is in mini-led type hdr displays. If you can get twice the lumens/nits per watt then an led upgrade could turn an hdr600 rated display to an hdr1000 display AND reduce power used (and cooling needed).
This means that to achieve the same brightness of normal leds you can use less power, by managing the voltage of those new leds
I wonder if this could work in reverse to make solar panels capture more light.
IIRC, glow worms are their late stage, post-July especially, where you will see them glowing on the ground. ;)
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.
Nice video, thanks :)
If the fire fly structures help to get light out of an LED, could it help a solar panel to capture more light ?
The fireflies organ is like a tiny fresnel lens??
Regards from South Africa
"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...
just skip to 7:45, you're welcome YT 😙
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.