This is PAGE 1 of the 2000-2009 exhibit. Go here for PAGE 2.

2000 AND BEYOND: LEDS REACH ACROSS TEMPORAL AND SPECTRAL BOUNDARIES


For decades, scientists have struggled in vain to create an LED that would cross over the "other end" of the visible spectrum, and Shuji Nakamura of Nichia "led" the fight. The result? The world's first commercially viable ultraviolet LED.

Like the original blue LED led the revolution for full-color displays and the first generation of white LEDs, the UV LED, once it is perfected, will change the way you light your home, car, and office. Not by itself of course, but when used with a phosphor (a material that glows when exposed to radiation) this LED and others succeeding it can be used to create super efficient white lighting that will be brighter and more efficient than any lighting technology in common use today.

Cree Corporation is charging ahead with some new UV LED developments of its own that may just be the turning point in modern lighting.

Aside from the obvious, this LED has been ending up in miniature flashlight cases, and used for checking money, invisible ink markers, event tickets, and numerous other applications once held in totality by bulky, power hungry fluorescent "blacklight" fixtures.



And on the other end of the spectrum, we find this: a 1.3 micron mid-infrared LED!
This wavelength is normally associated with diode lasers used in the telecom industry; apparently it is relatively difficult to make a plain LED emit in this range.
But the folks at Roithner-Lasertechnik, an Austrian company, have succeeded.



Although it *looks* like an ordinary cheap LED on the outside, a peek inside tells a different story.
For one, the die or light emitting chip is a bit larger than usual, and it has a perimeter contact bond for its ohmic contact rather than a tradtitional ball bond like you find in other red and infrared LEDs.
It is made with an Indium Gallium Arsenide substrate with an Indium Phosphide quantum well structure.
Find this unusual LED at Roithner Lasertechnik.





Meet the newest generation of super bright, super efficient LED technology. Manufactured by LumiLEDs, these amazingly brilliant LEDs also have a future in the way we light things up.

There are still two basic LED technologies in use today: AlInGaP (aluminum indium gallium phosphide) and InGaN (indium gallium nitride). One is used to create red, orange, and amber light; while the other is used for green, blue-green, blue, white, and ultraviolet LEDs.

Using special types of chip manufacturing processes, companies like LumiLEDs can make LEDs nearly as efficient as today's best halogen and fluorescent lighting - and they're becoming more and more efficient seemingly every day.

Read more about these amazing LEDs on my Luxeon Star page.



And this is the first commercially-available flashlight made with a Luxeon Star LED.



This is a prototype of an Arc LS flashlight, made in mid-2001.



Question: What do you see in this picture?



Answer: Looks like some bags of LED samples, right? They look like ordinary LEDs you might see hanging on the shelves of your local Radio Shack, but that's where the similarities end.

These my friend, are examples of the world's first TRUE VIOLET LEDs!
Until late 2001, the color spectrum of LEDs was fairly complete except it had no violet in it, and none seemed likely for awhile because scientists couldn't seem to lick the problem of high failure & short LED lifetimes with LEDs emitting in the violet region of the spectrum. But that's all changed, and now violet and near-UV LEDs are being made by at least several different LED chip makers: Cree Corporation, Uniroyal Optoelectronics, and Toyoda Gosei to name those I'm sure of. It has been rumoured that Lumileds may also be working on one, but I have no evidence of it, either direct or anecdotal, with which to prove it.

The LEDs in this picture all emit a deep violet light at wavelengths ranging from 393nm to 410nm. This encompases a range of visible colors from very deep and surprisingly bright violet blue (410nm) to a dimmer purple color (393nm) when viewing the light reflected off something. Viewing the LEDs directly will give some odd colors, like whitish electric blue for the 410nm to a whitish purple with slightly reddish overtones for an LED closer to 395nm.

All of them can cause other objects to fluoresce, or glow; however the shorter wavelength LEDs will *usually* do a better job at this.

Additional pictures of violet LEDs can be found on my Violet LEDs page.



These are International System Processing's (ISP's) answer to Lumileds's Luxeon Star LEDs. The one in the picture below is their high-powered white, part # HW-350-60.

ISP has LEDs like this in white, blue, true green, yellow, and red. They were introduced in mid- or late-2003, so as of this writing, they're still new and you may not see too many of these for awhile.



A page about these LEDs is right here if you want to learn a little more about them.





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