New Laser Treatment Could Make Incandescent Bulbs as Efficient as Fluorescent

June 2, 2009
New approach offers more pleasant light of traditional bulbs without the energy guilt

Thanks to a bit of ingenuity, Chunlei Guo, associate professor of optics at the University of Rochester, and his assistant Anatoliy Vorobyev have been able to squeeze out fluorescent-like energy performance from an incandescent light bulb.  The breakthrough boils down to a laser treatment of the bulb's tungsten filament, a processing step which could one day become a standard in the light bulb industry.

Traditionally, incandescent light bulbs provide more pleasant light, however they lack the efficiency of fluorescent designs.  The new bulb offers the brightness and color of a 100 watt incandescent bulb while using less than 60 watts.

The key is to blast the tungsten filament with an ultra-fast, ultra-powerful laser, which creates beneficial nanostructures on the metal's surface.  Describes Professor Guo, "We've been experimenting with the way ultra-fast lasers change metals, and we wondered what would happen if we trained the laser on a filament.  We fired the laser beam right through the glass of the bulb and altered a small area on the filament. Read more...