Led – The Light of Future

Life has always been made better by the invention of gadgets and other technical stuff. By the tremendous increase of technology our resources has also been over utilized. Led lights can be said as the perfect eco friendly lighting source available. The enormous number of advantages has made LEDs the most preferable light source. LED or a light emitting device is basically a semi conductor device. They are used in a variety of applications, from ordinary lights in houses to high mast lights their use is rapidly increasing. The first LED was introduced in 1962 as a practical electronic component. The first batches of LED’s were used to emit only red lights. Nowadays LEDs of different variety with wave lengths ranging from visible to infrared are available. LEDs are illuminated by an effect known as electroluminescence. This effect simply means the release of energy in the form of photons when the electrons recombine with holes. The energy gap of the semiconductor determines the color of the light.
LED’s unlike the incandescent lightings and fluorescent lightings presents many advantages which includes low energy consumption, longer life time, improved heftiness, smaller size and so on. High power lightings were also made possible after the advent of visible, ultraviolet and infrared LED’s. Efficiency of LED’s has improved and continues to improve with the development of certain chips which could emit more than 100 lumens per watt. More over another main advantage of LED is that, unlike incandescent and fluorescent lamps, its light emission is been restricted to a single direction. This phenomenon helps in conserving a whole lot of energy. Another advantage is that where colored lighting is required LED’s naturally emitting many colors are available, with no need for filters. To emit white light from LED’s require either of mixing it with red, blue or green colored LED’s or using a phosphor.
Currently bright blue LEDs are made by the principle based on band gap semiconductors GaN (gallium nitrite) and InGan ( indium gallium nitrite). This can be mixed to red and green LEDs currently available to make many other variety colors according to our need. In 1971 Jacques Pankova invented the first blue LEDs using gallium nitride. The output of these devices was so low that further research in this subject was not encouraged.
Currently LEDs are one of the most used light sources around the globe. Due to its vivid advantages they have captured the world in a few short period of time. Conventional sources of light such as the halogen bulbs are replaced by the LEDs. They are often referred as the green light source because of it energy conservation capabilities. Our predecessors gave us this world as it is now, so it is our responsibility to ensure that it will sustain even after we became dust.