Solving the Mystery of the Green LED For Pure, Efficient White Light
By deploying LED lighting across the board, the United States could save $120 billion - and untold tons of greenhouse gas emissions - over the next two decades. But it's another kind of green that's keeping the era of the LED from coming to fruition. While scientists have long been able to produce red and blue LED lights, the essential third ingredient for creating good, brilliant white light-green-has proven elusive. But researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory have finally cracked the code on LED green. By reverse engineering the solar cells they've worked on for so long, researchers at NREL were able to generate a difficult combination of green and red that could revolutionize the way we light our homes and other buildings. LEDs, after all, are the reverse of solar cells; one turns light into electricity, the other electricity into light. Though the solar cells NREL scientists were working on...