• Aceticon@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Given that the great big energy efficiency gains from LED lights comes from using just two emission bandgaps, one in the red part of the spectrum and another (the most efficient) in the blue - then surrounded by a phosporous layer to smooth the emission to cover more wavelengths than just those 2 - I doubt your suggestion would be possible without pretty much throwing away most of the energy efficiency of LEDs.

    It makes more sense to, for those who need such things, have separate lamps with different technologies more suitable to emit in those wavelengths (incandescent is great for IR because it’s quite literally heating a piece of wire until it is so hot it emits light so you can tune it to be mostly IR, whilst various gases used in fluorescent lamps actually emit in the UV range, hence why the “colder” color fluorescent lamps have this white powdery layer inside the glass, as that’s a substance that absorbs the UV light and re-emits it mainly in the upper part of the visible apectrum, hence why it bluer white).

    In fact I think you can do so already (get both IR and UV lamps) but their form factors might not be very practical as those are specialist devices for things like heating terrariums or illuminating signs which have elementes painted with fluorescent paint.

    • Amju Wolf@pawb.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      Pretty much all LED “lamps” are made of many separate LEDs. Nothing would prevent you from having a few UV LEDs in there.

      • Aceticon@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        It’s not a question of impossible (as there are emission bandgaps in the UV and in IR, used in regular LEDs), it’s a question of it being a complete total waste of efficiency to deploy that as standard to satisfy the perceived need of a small number of people.

        I suppose that there being for sale LED lamps clearly marked as, say, “UV and Infrared Enhanced” or something like that would make sense, but adding it to LED lamps in general would be quite the step back when it comes to the gains we’ve had from the higher efficiency of the LEDs (mainly because, as far as I know, those two emission bandgaps in the red and blue part of the spectrum are the most efficient we’ve discovered so far for illumination).

        Thinking about it, it’s quite a cool idea to, say, replace one of the LED “filaments” in the more modern LED lamps with one emitting in the UV or IR spectrum (you can actually get lose LED “filaments” with various colors from a place like Aliexpress, though a quick search hasn’t revealed any with colors outside the visible spectrum) and unlike in incandescent and fluorescent lamps the glass bulb itself doesn’t really serve to keep gas inside or outside - it’s mainly decorative and possibly to keep people from damaging the light structure holding the filaments - so can be removed, though, at least in cheap led light bulbs, one should match the voltage characteristics of the filaments already inside because the designs often take shortcuts to save on the cost of the mains adaptor module that sits inside the bottom of the light bulb.