The action of cooling things down plays a critical part of any mechanical or electric system, because the inevitable heat, produced by friction, is the number one cause of almost instant failure. So far, different methods that cool systems have been discovered, but not to the extent of performance that engineers dream of building their computers or mechanical devices (cars, for example).
Oregon State University researchers, led by Terry Hendricks, have discovered a method of applying a nanostructured coating that could make the heat transfer more easily. Their findings have been published in the International Journel of Heat and Mass Transfer, and they also filed a patent for them.
Colin Bennett on 04 Mar 08It seems that in the last decade scientists have switched goals from producing efficient LEDs to producing "natural light" LEDs. However, whenever this was achieved, significant efficiency sacrifices were made to enable experimentation to work. Through use of a nano-crystaline coating, it seems that scientists at Bilkent University, Turkey have succeeded in creating an LED that "produces attractive white light while wasting next-to-no electricity". The definition of attractive is that for each watt of light produced, around 300 lumens are visible to the human eye. This compares with fluorescents which produce around 80 lumens per watt, according to the article. There is however a barrier to market. This is because the nano-crystalline coating is expensive and apparently difficult to produce.
