Imagery from outer space makes it abundantly clear just how many light bulbs are shining in the world every night. If we want to spare the environment and reduce the amount of power these lighting systems consume (while lowering energy costs), creating more efficient light bulbs is a must. Currently, commercial LEDS work at an efficiency rate of 50 percent, but that number could balloon to around 90 percent very soon thanks to engineers at Penn State. Inspired by the light-emitting firefly, the engineers have developed a new type of LED light bulb that has microstructures that mimic the firefly. This allows the LED to reflect light that tends to get lost in conventional LEDs, nearly doubling the efficiency of the light bulb. Once commercialized, these firefly-inspired LEDs could save the world massive amounts of electricity.
These firefly-inspired LEDs are nearly twice as efficient as conventional ones
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