Nth Degree chief scientist William J. Ray doesn’t think compact fluorescent light bulbs are any kind of solution for cheap efficient lighting. “Do you know what’s in those things?” he asked me when I stopped by his booth at the ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit last night. “Methyl mercury.” Poison, in other words.
He says he and his team at Tempe-based Nth Degree Technologies think they have a better idea: printable inorganic LEDs. Each one is a mere 24-microns across, about the size of a white blood cell, but can emit enough light to read by. No special manufacturing process required; just print them out in any desired pattern using conventional printing techniques.
Watch Ray demo a sheet of prototypes and hear his explanation in my video above.
That’s nothing short of amazing. And Mercury free.
That’s the idea…safe…energy efficient…cheap as hell. They’re also talking about making displays out of this stuff
Beautiful! I want to make an over coat for myself, using Nth Degree printed LEDs, like the one worn by Kevin Flynn (played by Jeff Bridges) in the new Tron movie! 🙂
The possibilities really are endless. Who knows, maybe they can do tattoos….