OLEDs hit the market …

… at $100 per square inch for prototypes. Ouch.

From the link:

Someday, our ceilings and walls might radiate light, illuminating indoor spaces as brightly and evenly as natural daylight.

Though that possibility remains years off, the Dutch electronics company Philips is letting people tinker with the technology that would enable it.

The world’s biggest lighting maker has begun selling do-it-yourself kits with little glowing wafers called “Lumiblades.” They come in red, white, blue or green for anyone who wants to pay nearly $100 per square inch.

It’s one of the first chances people outside research labs have had to get their hands on lights made from organic light emitting diodes, or OLEDs.

The company’s aim is to get designers, architects and other creative types thinking about how these flat lights can be used, and to start collaborating on early products.

Head here for more blog posts on OLEDs.

“Light Blossom” latest in street light tech

Not surprisingly from Philips. They’ve really been pushing lighting innovations these days.

Hit this link for more the whole PhysOrg story.

From the link:

One solution to the urban lighting problem is a new concept called “Light Blossom,” designed by Philips Electronics. Light Blossom is an intelligent LED lighting system that can provide bright light when it senses people walking nearby, and decrease its luminosity when people aren’t around. The technology is also energy-efficient and operates off the grid, gathering solar and wind energy during the day to use for light at night.

During the day, Light Blossom works similar to a flower, opening its “petals” to collect solar energy. As the sun moves across the sky, the petals gradually reorient themselves so they’re facing the sun head-on to operate at maximum efficiency, similar to a sunflower.

On cloudy days when the wind is strong, the Light Blossom automatically converts its petals into an upward, open position that allows them to catch the wind. As the petals rotate, they transfer the motion to a built-in rotor that converts the motion to energy.

The Light Blossom collects energy from the sun and wind during the day. At night, the device glows dimly when no one is around, and brighter when it senses motion, such as people walking nearby. Image: Pocket-Lint.

 

Flexible OLED offers new lighting options

I’ve done a fair amount of blogging on OLEDs (hit this link for those posts and all my praise for the tech) so I do follow the developments and breakthroughs to a great extent. This application of Organic Light-Emitting Diodes is very exciting because it has the possibility of completely revolutionizing the concept of artificial lighting.

Plus it’s just plain cool.

From the second link:

On a bank of the Mohawk River, a windowless industrial building of corrugated steel hides something that could make floor lamps, bedside lamps, wall sconces and nearly every other household lamp obsolete. It’s a machine that prints lights.

The size of a semitrailer, it coats an 8-inch wide plastic film with chemicals, then seals them with a layer of metal foil. Apply electric current to the resulting sheet, and it lights up with a blue-white glow.

You could tack that sheet to a wall, wrap it around a pillar or even take a translucent version and tape it to your windows. Unlike practically every other source of lighting, you wouldn’t need a lamp or conventional fixture for these sheets, though you would need to plug them into an outlet.

The sheets owe their luminance to compounds known as organic light-emitting diodes, or OLEDs. While there are plenty of problems to be worked out with the technology, it’s not the dream of a wild-eyed startup.

OLEDs are beginning to be used in TVs and cell-phone displays, and big names like Siemens and Philips are throwing their weight behind the technology to make it a lighting source as well. The OLED printer was made by General Electric Co. on its sprawling research campus here in upstate New York. It’s not far from where a GE physicist figured out a practical way to use tungsten metal as the filament in a regular light bulb. That’s still used today, nearly a century later.

The coming future of LED lighting …

… has had me very excited about the prospects for quite a while now.

Here’s a press release from today from Philips and their take on the future of home lighting.

The release:

Philips Reveals Future of Home Lighting at Museum of Modern Art Exhibition

BURLINGTON, Mass., Oct. 1 /PRNewswire/ — Already illuminating thousands of commercial environments today, Philips’ solid-state lighting technology moves into the home as part of Cellophane House, on view at The Museum of Modern Art’s Home Delivery, Fabricating the Modern Dwelling exhibit in New York. Surpassing the limitations of conventional lamps and fixtures, Cellophane House is a five-story, fully transparent and sustainable house illuminated solely by LED sources as a provocation for the future possibilities of residential lighting.

Home Delivery is a two-part exhibition on the historical and contemporary significance of factory-produced architecture. It includes five full-scale houses, one of which is Cellophane House, in the outdoor space west of the Museum. Designed by KieranTimberlake Associates, Cellophane House features a translucent architectural envelope that collects solar energy through integrated photovoltaic panels, and demonstrates the use of embedded light as an element of architecture itself.

“Cellophane House perfectly demonstrates the future direction of lighting; freed from the limitations posed by typical fixture size, shape and heat emission. With LED sources, we were able to create luminous surfaces that emphasize the house’s translucency and architectural features in various intensities and colors,” said Brian Stacy of Arup Lighting. “Most importantly, we were able to achieve the desired effect in a sustainable and energy-efficient way.”

The structure’s entire LED lighting installation consumes just 1.3 watts of energy per square foot, compared with the average house of about 1.7 to 2.3 watts per square foot, including plug loads for the average house.

“The opportunity to replace conventional sources with energy-efficient LED lighting continues to grow, yet just as exciting is the potential to encourage completely new methods of lighting,” said Jeff Cassis, CEO, Philips Color Kinetics. “Today we offer simple solutions with familiar form and function to help advance adoption of solid-state lighting. But as demonstrated by Cellophane House, LED systems accommodate a far wider range of applications that allow us to rethink the way spaces are illuminated.”

Unique applications of Philips’ LED lighting at Cellophane House include:

— Uplighting the translucent floors with eW(R) Cove Powercore to create luminous planes

— Creating a glowing staircase by embedding eW Cove Powercore in the stair treads

— The use of eW MR lamps in place of conventional sources commonly used for recessed downlighting

— Uplighting the roof deck canopy with ColorBlast(R) 12 to bring dynamic color and a visual counterpoint to the house

Said Stacy, “In a typical house, all wiring and mechanical systems are hidden behind dry wall — an impossibility in a house made of transparent and translucent materials. Because LED systems are compact and free of heat emission, they can be concealed in tight spaces where conventional lights are impractical. Further, with the ability to connect up to 100 units on a single circuit, the task of circuiting is a breeze, and does not require hidden transformers.”

“Our mission is to create a design with a significantly reduced carbon footprint, and LED technology helps us achieve that goal,” says David Riz, Principal, KieranTimberlake Associates.

Philips sees LED technology as the future of energy-efficient lighting; today for many commercial uses and increasingly for residential applications as well. Performance trends suggest that LEDs have the ability to become predominant light sources, given their longer life, durability, non-toxic materials, lack of radiated heat and UV, and flexibility to accommodate wide-ranging fixtures and form factors. Moreover, as inherently digital devices, LEDs produce light that can be intelligently controlled to dynamically customize environments, from restaurants and casinos to retail shops, homes and even automobiles.

Additional information about Home Delivery is available at http://www.momahomedelivery.org/ .

  Digital images are available upon request.

  About Philips Color Kinetics

Philips Color Kinetics transforms environments through dynamic and more efficient uses of light. Its award-winning lighting systems and technologies apply the benefits of LEDs as a highly efficient, long lasting, environmentally friendly, and inherently digital source of illumination — reinventing light itself as a highly controllable medium. Headquartered in Burlington, MA, USA, Philips Color Kinetics is the leading center of innovation and product development for Philips’ global LED lighting systems business. The organization also enables widespread adoption of LED lighting through OEM partnerships in diverse markets. More information is available at http://www.colorkinetics.com/ .

About Royal Philips Electronics

Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands (NYSE:PHG)(NYSE:AEX:)(NYSE:PHI) is a diversified Health and Well-being company, focused on improving people’s lives through timely innovations. As a world leader in healthcare, lifestyle and lighting, Philips integrates technologies and design into people-centric solutions, based on fundamental customer insights and the brand promise of “sense and simplicity”. Headquartered in the Netherlands, Philips employs approximately 133,000 employees in more than 60 countries worldwide. With sales of US$42 billion (EUR 27 billion) in 2007, the company is a market leader in cardiac care, acute care and home healthcare, energy efficient lighting solutions and new lighting applications, as well as lifestyle products for personal well-being and pleasure with strong leadership positions in flat TV, male shaving and grooming, portable entertainment and oral healthcare. News from Philips is located at www.philips.com/newscenter.

ColorBlast, Color Kinetics, and eW are registered trademark of Philips Solid-State Lighting Solutions in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

Source: Philips Color Kinetics
   
Web site:  http://www.colorkinetics.com/
http://www.momahomedelivery.org/

3D sans glasses, nanotube electron turbine and recreating the first cell

From KurzweilAI.net — 3D imagery without the need for special glasses, printing molecules with a nanotech electron turbine, and recreating what is beleived to be the first living cell on Earth.

3-D Viewing without Goofy Glasses

Technology Review, June 12, 2008Philips’ WOWvx displays–which allow viewers to perceive high-quality 3-D images without the need for special glasses–are now beginning to appear in shopping malls, movie-theater lobbies, and theme parks worldwide. Artist rendition of WOWvx 3-D screens (Phillips) The technology uses image-processing software, plus display hardware that includes sheets of tiny lenses atop LCD screens. The lenses project slightly different images to viewers’ left and right eyes, which the brain translates into a perception of depth.   Read Original Article>>

 

‘Electron turbine’ could print designer molecules

New Scientist news service, June 11, 2008Lancaster University scientists have developed a conceptual design for a carbon-nanotube-based motor that spins in a current of electrons (like a wind turbine). (C. Lambert) The device could be made by suspending a carbon nanotube between two nanotubes and running an electric current through it, causing it to spin and function like a pump or printer. By pumping atoms into the motor, it could assemble molecules (become the world’s smallest molecular printer), or shrink computer memory or processors 10 times smaller than existing devices by using an array of motors shuttling atoms between the 1 and 0 ends of the middle tube to store or process information.   Read Original Article>>

 

 

Scientists Close to Reconstructing First Living Cell

ScientificAmerican.com, June 10, 2008Harvard Medical School researchers have built a model of what they believe in the first living cell on Earth (3.5 to 4 billion years ago), containing a strip of genetic material surrounded by a fatty membrane and capable of replicating. (Janet Iwasa)   Read Original Article>>