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Some people say that LED's still aren't as bright as Compact Fluorescent bulbs. Some people say you should switch to LED's RIGHT NOW because they're way more efficient. So what's the real answer? It depends...this compilation explains... There's a push now towards "green" technology - alternative energy and finding ways for us to reduce our carbon emissions and reduce our dependency on foreign oil. One of the most promising technologies are LED lighting.
Fixture efficacy
In certain fixtures, an LED bulb actually gives out MORE light or is more efficient than CFL bulbs.
In this diagram, about half the light the CFL bulb is giving off is actually wasted and is reflected back in to the ceiling while with the LED, ALL the light is directed downwards where it's usable. So in this case, the efficacy of the bulbs while they are INSIDE the fixture For LED's: 90 lumens per watt (lm/W) For CFL's: is reduced from 61 lumens per watt to 30 lumens per watt (lm/W) since half of the light is wasted.
LED's give directional light. This is unlike incandescent, halogen or compact fluorescent bulbs that give out omni-directional light (or light all around the bulb). The way that's normally been used to measure the efficiency and brightness of these bulbs is the lumen. You've probably heard of it or seen it on packaging. Another measurement is lumens per watt. Both of these measurements are poor ways to compare the brightness of LEDs to other types of bulbs (CFL, incandescent & halogen).
When electricity flows into the electrodes, electrons (shown here as red dots) boil" from their surface and shoot off down the thin white tubes, which contain mercury gas, shown here as bigger blue dots. As the electrons hurtle down the tubes, they collide with atoms of the mercury. The collisions give the mercury atoms energy so their electrons jump to higher energy levels. But this makes the mercury atoms unstable, so the electrons quickly return to their ground states. When they do so, they give off photons of invisible ultraviolet light (slightly higher frequency than the blue light we can see), shown here as a purple wiggly line. If fluorescent lights make invisible light, how come they glow white? Here's the clever part. The thin glass tubes of a fluorescent light are covered in white-colored chemicals called phosphors. When the ultraviolet light strikes atom of the phosphors (shown here as gray dots), it excites their electrons in just the same way that the mercury atoms were excited. This makes the ph, fluorescent lights make their energy in a three-step process: 1. Electrodes take electrical energy from the power supply and generate moving electrons. 2. The moving electrons collide with mercury atoms in the tubes to make ultraviolet light. 3. The white phosphor coating of the tubes converts the ultraviolet light into visible light (that we can see). Photo: The electronic circuit inside a CFL lamp. The transformer is the big orange/gold thing in the center. The black cylinder on the left is a capacitor. The four silver colored contacts on the extreme right are where the electrodes attach.
Shaping of the LED die is critical to improve their efficiency. LEDs of various shapes; hemispherical dome, inverted cone, truncated cones etc have been demonstrated to have better extraction efficiency over conventional designs. However cost increases with complexity.
The light emission cones of a real LED wafer are far more complex than a single pointsource light emission. Typically the light emission zone is a 2D plane between the wafers. Across this 2D plane, there is effectively a separate set of emission cones for every atom. Drawing the billions of overlapping cones is impossible, so this is a simplified diagram showing the extents of all the emission cones combined. The larger side cones are clipped to show the interior features and reduce image complexity; they would extend to the opposite edges of the 2D emission plane
A blue GaInN/GaN LED and a phosphor wavelength converter suspended in a epoxy resin make a white Light LED. The thickness of the phosphor containing epoxy and the concentration of the phosphor determine the relative strengths of the two emission bands
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Please visit the below link for more detailed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightemitting_diode#Physics