Efficient New Light Unfolds Like Paper

The next time your lamp needs a new light bulb, you might change the lamp shade instead of the light bulb.

New research out of Germany and published in a recent issue of the journal Nature shows that cheap and thin organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) can create white light as bright as any compact fluorescent bulb for nearly half the electricity as many compact fluorescent light bulbs.

"This uses cheap, well-known, and well-established materials," said Sebastian Reineke, a coauthor on the paper from the Institut fur Angewandte Photophysik.

"First, we optimized the light that the white OLED emits, and then did some optical tricks to ensure that more of the light was emitted," instead of getting stuck inside the materials themselves.