Fireflies create better LED bulbs

Researchers mimic the insect’s organ for real-life LED lighting applications.

BY NICOLETTE EMMINO

With winter’s approach, perhaps you miss the illumination of fireflies flickering in the warm night sky.

A team of Korean scientists is studying the biological phenomenon of fireflies to create a new and less expensive LED lens.

The team’s paper, “Biologically Inspired LED lens from cuticular nanostructures of firefly lantern,” published in September 2012, discusses the “unique observation of high-transmission nanostructures on a firefly lantern and its biological inspiration for highly efficient LED illumination.”

Typically, fireflies use their light as a signal of sexual communication to attract a partner. What researchers discovered is that their mate-attracting organ is composed of many layers. Using a scanning electron microscope, they learned more about how the structure’s layers allow for light and how the whole structure acts as an “anti-reflecting layer that cuts the loss of light and raises efficiency.”

They then developed an artificial version of the bioluminescent organ to use as a high-powered LED lens. The LED lens they created proved to increase light transmission, allowing 98% of light to pass through. The new biologically inspired technology can be used in the future to “increase light-extraction efficiency of high-power LED packages,” the team wrote in their paper.

Researchers were also able to reduce the process of coating LED lights. Traditionally, the coating would require a two-step injection molding process. The new technology affords designers the ability to coat with just a one-step process. These advancements could reduce the cost of LEDs.

For those of you who have never lived in an area with fireflies, you can make your own LED fireflies. Methods for creating fireflies range from technical and complicated to simple enough for a Boy cout troop project, just by using a simple yellow LED light at the end of a magnet wire, you’re on the road to creating your own fireflies.

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