Super Light bulbs from Lasers

So i was just reading and stumbled across this. its an article about lasers making light bulbs brighter. Apparently scientists like to shine their lasers into random things as well.



"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," says Chunlei Guo, associate professor of optics at the University of Rochester. "We fired the laser beam right through the glass of the bulb and altered a small area on the filament. When we lit the bulb, we could actually see this one patch was clearly brighter than the rest of the filament, but there was no change in the bulb's energy usage."

http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=3385

A couple of us here have burned holes in light bulbs!! CO2 lasers don't light ub bulbs very well............

Mike

and that's suposed to be done with what type of laser?

Hemlock_Mike said:

CO2 lasers don't light ub bulbs very well............

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Well, strictly speaking they light up the bulb pretty well for as long as it takes to melt out of the way... the filament is another story, though it might be possible.

The news item is quite interesting: incandescent lamps are more efficient when their filament has lower albedo. What could boost efficiency further would be materials that have high emissivity in the visible range, but less in the infrared.

Unfortunately it is difficult to produce nanostructures on tungsten filaments, and even more difficult to keep them in place as the filaments run very close to the melting temperature - and even tungsten will become somewhat malleable at that point.

I've heard that they can make ultra-bright LEDs using lasers as the intense blue source for hitting the phosphor. Makes me wonder, if they ever get released, if you could take apart an ultra-bright "LED" to get the blue laser diodes out of it.

I'll stick with HID, thanks. LEDs may be slightly more efficient than metal halide bulbs now, but there aren't many LEDs that are capable of 35,000 lumens like a good ol' halide.

Lasers heating filaments? That's ridiculous. even if lasers were 110% efficient, it'd still be easier to just make the filament bigger and pass more current through it. suppose you COULD double the efficiency. It's still only a third of what halides, LEDs, HPS, or fluorescents can do.

GoRdOn_B said:

"...there was no change in the bulb's energy usage."

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The bulb is using energy from the laser. How much energy does the laser consume? being an "ultra-powerful laser", I'd assume it'd take an ultra-lot of energy.

They blackened the filament, removed laser power, and then used the bulb as one normally would but with increase efficiency since the filament is more emissive in the visible spectrum.

I've heard that they can make ultra-bright LEDs using lasers as the intense blue source for hitting the phosphor. Makes me wonder, if they ever get released, if you could take apart an ultra-bright "LED" to get the blue laser diodes out of it.

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It is possible to use a blu-ray laser die (or something similar) to pump energy into a phosphor. I think any commercial product would be a laser die with a phosphor coated right on top of that, making removing the laser impossible.

This is very similar to how white leds are made today, but with the added advantage that laser diodes tend to be more efficient than leds - at least when manufacturing cost is not considered.