the polarization of light for improved lighting technologies

The firm claims that over the next 10 years, savings of more than $1.8 trillion will eliminate the need to burn almost a billion barrels of oil in power plants that would otherwise produce 10 gigatons in the carbon dioxide emissions.Professor Jong Kyu Kim pointed out that such enormous savings will result from replacing 80 percent of traditional led high bay light with LEDs over the next 10 years. And besides replacement, there are also new capabilities possible in this lighting revolution—such as controlling the spectrum and spatial emission pattern, the polarization of the light and temporal modulation.

RPI's Smart Lighting Engineering Resource Center recently received $18.5 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Together with Boston University and the University of New Mexico, the Smart Resource Center will, over the next five years, develop novel optical materials, new device technologies, and applications of smart lighting technologies.Kim and Schubert claim that the LED is to lighting technology, what the transistor was to the vacuum tube. Namely, transistors began as a simple replacement technology for vacuum tubes, but evolved into a revolution in IC. Likewise, they claim that the LED will begin as simple replacements, but will evolve into integrated lighting systems with functions as diverse as transistors have provided for ICs.

Simple replacement results in a 20-time savings in energy over of incandescent bulbs and a five-time savings when compared to compact fluorescent bulbs. Beyond replacements, however, LEDs promise to enable new applications that RPI's Smart Lighting Engineering Resource Center is concentrating on developing. The three top candidates being developed by RPI are: control of the light spectrum for medical applications, control of temporal modulation for wireless optical networking, and control of the polarization of led high bay light for improved lighting technologies.Spectrum control will enable lighting to change color during the day to positively influence the mood of workers, as well as cure some medical problems that are caused today by poor lighting conditions, according to RPI.