A new special LED light quoted with Quantum dots produces a soft white light with a slight yellowish cast just like an incandescent bulb. Moreover, the LED light produces twice the light output per watt and last up to 50,000 hours or 50 times as long as a 60-watt bulb. The Department of Energy has estimated that LED lighting could reduce U.S. energy consumption for lighting by 29 percent by 2025, saving the nation’s households about $125 million in the process.

Key points from the Vanderbilt News story:

• Until 1993 LEDs could only produce red, green and yellow light. But then Nichia Chemical of Japan figured out how to produce blue LEDs.
• White-light quantum dots, by contrast, produce a smoother distribution of wavelengths in the visible spectrum with a slightly warmer, slightly more yellow tint.
• The Vanderbilt researchers are the first to report making quantum dots that spontaneously emit white light, but they aren’t the first to report using quantum dots to produce hybrid, white-light LEDs.
• LED lights use semiconductor manufacturing, traditional light bulbs are metal and glass. Using the quantum dot approach, the manufacture becomes primarily a chemical process. The possibilities this opens include making almost any object into a light source by coating it with luminescent paint capable of producing light in a rainbow of different shades, including white.