There’s a reason why LEDs booming in the lighting world today.
Residential LEDs (light emitting diodes) use at least 75% less energy and last 25 times longer than conventional bulbs, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
But what makes LEDs more efficient than conventional bulbs?
The biggest reason why LEDs use so much less energy is that they don’t emit much heat. So compared to incandescent bulbs, which lose about 90% of their energy as heat, and CFLs, which lose about 80%, LEDs are simply less wasteful with their energy.
LEDs’ energy efficiency alone doesn’t make them perfect, however—there are still R&D challenges to address before LEDs completely become the light of our lives.
So building on abundant research over the past several years to improve LED materials, new research continues to push the technology further forward.
No matter how the scientists tried to increase the amount of indium by growing single atomic layers of indium nitride on gallium nitride, however, their efforts failed—they couldn’t exceed 25%–30% indium content in the material.
So they took a closer look at what was going on. Atomic resolution transmission electron microscopy and in-situ reflection high-energy electron diffraction revealed that actually undergoes an atomic rearrangement at 25% indium content. Instead of a predicted structure that bonds indium atoms with three neighboring atoms, instead favors a structure that bonds indium atoms with four nearby atoms. While this