Want to ditch your inefficient incandescent bulbs for some energy-saving compact fluorescent (CFL) ones? Be prepared to deal with toxic chemicals inside the bulbs. Now there’s another option: nanofiber bulbs, which are safe, energy efficient, cost-effective, and emit a warmer, more pleasant light than CFLs.
The new bulbs, developed by RTI International, contain nanofibers — materials that are the same length as human hair but have a smaller diameter and tinier surface features. RTI combined nanofiber-based reflectors and photoluminescent nanofibers (PLN) to produce the nanofiber bulbs. The bulbs release 55 lumens per watt, making them 5 times more efficient than average bulbs.
RTI researchers expect the nanofiber technology to be ready in three to five years. If they end up being as cheap as CFLs, count us in.
Via Popular Science
I look forward to trying these out when they are available for purchase. I love the idea of full spectrum lighting from a device that has no glass or gases involved.
I do wonder if they’ll have a long lifespan, and if they will be able to be recycled.
“If they end up being significantly cheaper than LEDs, count us in.”
Sorry to break it to you but they are powered by LEDs (listen to the video just before the 3 minute mark) so unlikely to be that much cheaper than white-light LEDs (which are normally a mix of 3 different colour LEDs).
Essentially, what it sounds like they’ve made, is a material which is a super-efficient luminescent sheet that will take a blue LED and make it into a white light (probably better than simply using a white-light LED by scavenging some of the invisible spectrum that the blue LED creates).