Lasers Set To Be The Future Of Interior Lighting

For this past 20 years, research scientist Steven DenBaars at UC Santa Barbara, has been doing work on LED lights. He has eagerly tried to get them to a point where they are the true heir of Edison’s ‘Electric Bulb’. However, DenBaars has now decided to take it one step further by moving on to the next big thing ‘lasers’. Experts say that it is possible for us to get to that stage within the next 10 years, with results being much more accessible as well as being more naturalistic. For example, just imagine your entire living room ceiling being lit up as if it were just one giant skylight, or ball rooms being replaced with hundreds of small lights to a handful of ultra bright light sources. DenBaars states, “I’m waiting for the lighting designers to catch up!”

How Incandescent Light bulbscan be replaced by Lasers

At first glance it does not seem there is anything in common, with the laser that generates light in a single wavelength while focusing on a small minuscule target, and an incandescent light bulb, which focuses lighting by heating a filament. The kind of lasers in which DenBaars is currently working on, are called ‘laser diodes’ and exist on the current existing light emitting diodes.

The best laser diodes are equally as effective at turning electricity into light as a standard LED light bought in a store. Although, there is one major difference, you can pump over 2,000 times as much electricity into a laser diode. In theory, this means that replacing the light emitting diodes with laser diodes in a typical LED bulb, will not work. Reasons why this will not work are simple, the laser light bulb will catch fire with all the waste heat that is generated and that it would create a godly amount of light, sufficient to blind anyone who looked at it. DenBaars states that by using just a handful of tiny yet powerful lasers, and redirecting them appropriately with light-transmitting plastic would create an evenly distributed glow, solving this problem.

One example of this technology being used in the real world is BMW. BMW are already using blue laser diodes in the headlights of there ‘hybrid supercar’, the i8. Like all lasers, the beams are aimed at a phosphor that transforms this blue laser light to a diffused white light. The results show that the headlights themselves could ‘easily outlive the automobile’ in which they were installed.