Solid-State Lighting Science EFRC

Welcome

Sandia’s center is one of 46 multi-million dollar EFRCs funded by the Department of Energy Office of Science. These centers are a means to enlist the talents and skills of the very best American scientists and engineers to address current fundamental scientific roadblocks to U.S. energy security. For a short summary of the EFRC program and its impact, see the fact sheet below.
EFRC Fact Sheet 404.53 kB.

Lighting consumes roughly 22 percent of U.S. electricity, a roughly $50 billion/year cost to the U.S. consumer. Solid-state lighting is an emerging technology with the potential to reduce that energy consumption by a factor of 3 to 6 times. Despite a decade’s enormous progress, however, solid-state lighting remains a factor of 5 to 10 times away from this potential.

The SSLS center team is accelerating advances in this fundamental science by exploring energy conversion in tailored photonic structures. Drawing on Sandia’s long history of solid-state lighting research and development, and working closely with its university and industry partners, the center’s goals are to:

• Understand the mechanisms and defects in SSL semiconductor materials that presently limit the energy efficiency
• Investigate conversion of electricity to light using radically new designs, such as luminescent nanowires and quantum dots, and lasers
• Study energy conversion processes in structures whose sizes are even smaller than the wavelength of light

The center aims to lay the scientific groundwork, now, that will enable achieving the upper-end potential of solid-state lighting 10 to 20 years from now.