Researchers create world's thinnest light bulb with graphene

How many scientists does it take to change the light bulb? A team from the US and South Korea, it seems.

 

Researchers used graphene, one of the world's strongest materials, to make a flexible light bulb just one atom thick.

 

“We’ve created what is essentially the world’s thinnest light bulb,” a National Geographic report quoted Columbia University engineering professor James Hone as saying.

 

A separate report on Mashable noted the light's color can be changed by changing the distance between the filament and the substrate.

 

It added graphene may be only as thick as an atom, but is strong as a diamond.

 

Hone is one of the authors of a study published by a team of researchers from South Korea, Columbia's Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, Stanford University and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

 

The new bulb is one of graphene-powered lighting products expected to debut this year, National Geographic said.

 

Later this year, it said a graphene-coated LED that lasts longer and uses less energy than a regular LED - thanks to research at Britain’s University of Manchester - is expected to hit the market.

 

Light from graphene

 

Young Duck Kim, a postdoctoral research scientist at Columbia who led the latest work, began observing light emissions from the newly discovered graphene - extremely lightweight but stronger than steel.

 

Further study showed passing a current through a filament with graphene strips could reach temperatures of more than 2,500 degrees Celsius, high enough to produce visible light.

 

Yet, despite the high temperature, the metal electrodes to which the strips were attached did not melt.

 

It was found that graphene becomes a poor conductor of heat.

 

Kim said commercializing the technology could take five years, resulting in graphene-based flexible and transparent light displays.

 

Yun Daniel Park, a professor of physics and astronomy at Seoul National University and co-lead author of the study, said this is an idea from Thomas Edison.

 

“Edison originally used carbon as a filament for his light bulb, and here we are going back to the same element, but using it in its pure form—graphene—and at its ultimate size limit—one atom thick,” Park said. — Joel Locsin/JDS, GMA News