Energy Efficiency

Energy Frontier Research Center for Solid-State Lighting Science

Lighting consumes roughly 22 percent of United States electricity, a roughly $50 billion per year cost to the U.S. consumer. Solid-state lighting (SSL) is an emerging technology with the potential to reduce that energy consumption by a factor of 3–6 times. Despite a decade’s enormous progress, however, SSL remains a factor of 5–10 times away from this potential. Sandia’s Solid-State Lighting Science (SSLS) Center, a DOE Office of Science (SC) Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC), will accelerate advances in this fundamental science by exploring energy conversion in tailored photonic structures. Drawing on Sandia’s long history of SSL R&D, and working closely with its university and industry partners, the SSLS EFRC will

• work 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, quantum dots, and hybrid architectures; and
• study energy conversion processes in structures whose sizes are even smaller than the wavelength of light.

Energy Efficiency News

ECIS-Veeco: Research Driving Down the Costs of Efficient LED LightingSolid state lighting (SSL), which uses light-emitting diodes (LEDs), has the potential to be 10 times more energy efficient than traditional incandescent light bulbs. Currently, 20% of U.S. energy use powers lighting. SSL technology can potentially significantly cut U.S. lighting energy use, reducing electricity consumption for lighting by one-fourth. That’s why since 2003, the Department [...]

Sandia Demonstrated First-Time, Single-Mode Lasing in Gallium-Nitride Nanowire LasersSemiconductor nanowire lasers have attracted intense interest as promising compact, low-power coherent light sources for on-chip applications, many of which (e.g., imaging, multiplex communica­tion, data storage) desire high beam quality and spectral purity—conditions that can be satisfied by single-mode operation in nanowire lasers. However, due to the lack of mode-selection mechanisms, most reported nanowire lasers exhibit [...]

Sandia Wide-Bandgap Semiconductor WorkshopIn response to increased interest in wide-bandgap (WBG) semiconductor projects by DOE, on October 30, 2012, Sandia hosted a one-day brain­storming workshop aimed at identifying the value, scope, structure, and partnership oppor­tunities of a potential National Center for Wide Bandgap Semiconduc­tors. Participants from DOE, industry, academia, and other labs participated in a series of breakout [...]