LED bulbs are bright, have long lives, are energy efficient, but very expensive. But that may soon change. A new production breakthrough could see the costs of making the bulbs drop by as much as 75 percent.
A start-up company called Bridgelux has potentially discovered a way to make the bulbs much cheaper to produce, by substituting one of the most expensive components. Traditional LED bulbs use sapphire wafers, but Bridgelux has been able to successfully create equally as effective bulbs using much cheaper wafers made from silicone.
And the bulbs are still very bright, producing about 10 times the amount of light as an incandescent bulb, all for 1/10 of the energy consumption. So when you factor in the new dramatic price decrease, LED bulbs could become much more mainstream.
That is, once this technology is ready for mass production, which should be in around two or three years.
Via Fast Company
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