The Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) has demonstrated the first monolithic integration of LED and high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) on the same gallium nitride (GaN) chip. It is estimated that this pioneering work could facilitate the generation of new LED technology that is low-cost, more efficient, and which enables new functions beyond illumination. In existing LED lighting systems, the external components including inductors, capacitors, silicon interconnects and wires, must be installed on or integ...

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) have developed and demonstrated a new type of LED with significantly improved lighting performance and energy efficiency. The researchers worked in collaboration with Samsung Electro-Mechanics to develop the new polarization-matched LED that they say exhibits an 18 percent increase in light output and a 22 percent increase in wall-plug efficiency, which essentially measures the amount of electricity the LED converts into light.

According to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)’s recent study, the emerging solid-state lighting that replaces incandescent and fluorescent bulbs with LED can reap enormous savings in cost, natural resources and pollution. The firm claims that over the next 10 years, savings of more than $1.8 trillion will eliminate the need to burn almost a billion barrels of oil in power plants that would otherwise produce 10 gigatons in the carbon dioxide emissions.