Fluorescents may have been all the rage for the past couple years, but they are about to be upstaged in the hierarchy of light bulbs. Researchers are Cambridge University have developed a low cost light emitting diode (LED) bulb that is brighter, cheaper, and lasts longer than both fluorescent and incandescent bulbs.

While LED’s have been around for a while and are common in flashlights and even some automobiles, there hasn’t been a cost effective solution to replace traditional building lighting with LED’s. The big change that allowed for a more cost effective solution was the use of more common, less expensive silicon wafers to grow the LED’s. The traditional method uses sapphire wafers which would have driven bulb cost to over $28. This new design will last over 60 years and cost only $2.85 to produce.

Today, lighting in homes and offices throughout Britain accounts for 20% of the country’s energy usage. Replacing all those bulbs with the new LED’s would reduce lighting usage to only 5%. A similar drop would be seen in the U.S. as well, per the latest estimates from the Department of Energy.

A few other benefits of Britain’s breakthrough include no use of the hazardous chemical mercury, instant-on with zero flickering (which can trigger seizures in some people), and are about the size of a penny. We are probably used to expecting breakthroughs like this to take a long time to make it to market, but a manufacturer in Britain is already working on prototypes and the first bulbs could be for sale within two years.

Source: Daily Mail UK

via DailyTech

This guest post was written by T.J. Aaron from LaptopLogic.com – the best place to read about latest notebooks and go through new notebook cases.