« Back To News & Events

April 10, 2008

Super Efficient Plasma Lightbulb Burns Brighter Than A Streetlight

By Charlie Sorrel April 08, 2008 | 7:28:09 AMCategories: Innovations
6000º Kelvin. That's the temperature at the surface of the Sun. It's also the temperature inside the new hyper efficient plasma lightbulb from Luxim, which puts out 140 lumens per watt. That's double the efficiency of an LED and almost ten times better than an incandescent bulb.

The little pod sits inside a ring of "dielectric material", which concentrates an electrical field into the bulb. The contents of the bulb vaporize and the plasma glows. A single of these tiny bulbs is brighter than a streetlight.

Back to that temperature. 6000 K is close to the color temperature of daylight (5500K), so the Luxim bulb doesn't suffer from a "cold" light like some energy saving solutions. Right now Luxim is pushing its tech at the entertainment industries: projectors and light displays. As costs fall, though, this could end up everywhere, except perhaps a mood-lit bachelor pad.

Video: Luxim's tiny but powerful plasma lightbulb [CNET via Treehugger]