Happenings - Zanotta SpA

FOCUS
Lighting in a solid state will be the
next “disruptive technology”.
New alchemists for new lighting.
Happenings
no.3/06 p.9
New LED Technology: a challenge!
In 1992 the Japanese Shuji Nakamura perfected the
industrial production process of a minute
electronic component (with just a few millimetres’
surface) that issued weak blue light rays. It was the
work of ten years, which cost three million dollars. Thus
began, in a remote Japanese region famous for its spas
and start up companies of solid state electronics, a
production technology for light that was recently
classified by the US Department for Development as
“disruptive technology”, a devastating technology that
will alter a sector of human activities at the very root. Few
recall how things were before the advent of “containers”
in the crucial transport sector. Something similar will
occur in lighting too. Technologies for the creation of
light in the solid state will provide the post-modern
domestic and urban scene with light - even infrared light -
with negligible dissipation of energy and heat and
remarkable resistance to shock, vibrations, wear and tear.
These “bulbs”, which function at a low voltage - often
below 24 volts - could radically redefine the electrical
safety of homes. The risk of electrocution caused by the
use of alternate 220V current would also be less.
LIGHT LIKE GOLD
The L.E.D. - acronym for Light-Emitting Diode - is a
“diode that issues light”. If ancient alchemists sought the
way to knowledge amidst metals and if they anxiously
sought the way to transmute a humble metal into a more
noble one (gold seemed the best choice to many),
modern technologists have found present day gold once
again amidst metal: light, the real wealth of our age and
the real essence of modernity. Today the value of a little
block - just a few cubic centimetres large - of purified
silica makes hundreds of chests full of gold coins grow
pale. Produced in establishments based on “clean
rooms”, environments in which air is constantly purified,
LEDs are produced by processing small silica bars that
have been treated in various manners. The result is a
minute device made by combining a precious metal and
a “non metal”. Controllable light radiation issues from
their link up region when a weak current flows through it.
THE CHANGES INSIDE
There are two immediate consequences for both project
planners and designers: extreme flexibility and
manoeuvrability, a wide selection of shapes and control
of both the flow and the colour of light. The firm instead
enjoys significant energy saving and greater safety
features. The advantages of LED-based lighting for living
and public environments in the first instance number
miniaturised light sources (clearly visible, they challenge
projects and product designers) and the subsequent
choice of multiple lighting for spectacular effects;
secondly they involve long duration, reliability, saturated
colour and the option to play with dynamic chromatisms.
Combined with easy to programme control circuits,
which are less bulky than a remote control, LEDs open
the doors to new opportunities both for designers and
buyers: the option of changing a light source’s quality,
intensity and colour at a later date. Written with the
collaboration of Flavio Vida.
The new bulb leds by Philips match the various lamp types.