Electricity for lighting accounts for around 5% of greenhouse gas emissions.
So how can we make it more efficient?
It seems fireflies could hold the answer. These light emitting insects captured the
interest of Belgian physicist Jean-Pol Vigneron while he was on a field trip in Central America.
Intrigued by their display, he brought some back to his lab.
The Firefly has a special light organ under its abdomen. From here the light
shines through a layer of the insect's exoskeleton called the cuticle.
Vigneron and his team found that this cuticle is made up of scale like structures,
some of which stick out at different angles and it's these jagged and
misfit scales that let out the most light. The tips of the scales protrude
and have a tilted slope, like a factory roof. The team wondered if they could
emulate this to make LED lights shine brighter.
They created a jagged over layer on top of a standard LED by depositing a layer
of light-sensitive material on top of the LEDs and then used a laser to create
the triangular factory roof profile. And guess what?
It increased light extraction by more than 50%.
All that extra light just by adding a few new shapes.