Advance brings low-cost, bright LED lighting closer to reality

Timothy D. Sands, at left, director of Purdue's Birck Nanotechnology Center in Discovery Park, and graduate student Mark Oliver, operate a "reactor" in work aimed at perfecting solid-state lighting, a technology that could cut electricity consumption by 10 percent if widely adopted. Inside the reactor, a material called gallium nitride is deposited on silicon at temperatures of about 1,000 degrees Celsius, or 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit. Purdue researchers have overcome a major obstacle in reducing the cost of the lighting technology, called light-emitting diodes. (Purdue News Service photo/David Umberger)