Real white light LED discovered

A BOFFIN at Vanderbilt University has discovered and built a true white light LED, which is already being touted as a replacement for the light bulb.

LEDs have been available in most colours for a while, but when it comes to pure white there is always a problem. The closest boffins have managed is to make a very pale blue-white light which was almost good enough to light a room in a cold blue-white sort of way.

According to the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Michael Bowers stumbled across the true white LEDs after he was trying to make really small quantum dots, which are crystals generally only a few nanometres small.

Normally you get a bright colour when you shine light on quantum dots or apply electricity to them. But when Bowers shined a laser on his batch of dots he got a white glow instead of the blue he was expecting.

He stirred the dots into polyurethane and coated a blue LED light bulb and got a warm, yellowish-white light that shines twice as bright and lasts 50 times longer than the standard 60 watt light bulb.

More here, not to mention our earlier yarn where we predicted the end of the light bulb here. µ