Lightbulbs may give way to light-walls

Michael Bowers, a grad student at Vanderbilt University, has come up with a new kind of lightbulb, superior in every way to the traditional 60-watter that we screw into an outlet. The LED-based lights are more durable, twice as bright and last 50 times longer, which means that US energy consumption for lighting would be reduced by 29% if everyone were to switch over to the new technology. More interestingly, the medium, chock full of tiny quantum dots, can begin its life as a liquid, meaning that it can be literally painted onto many different surfaces. Moreover, using different levels of electricity creates different colors, so a single bulb could produce a wide variety of effects.

Of course, the coolest thing about this is that almost anything can be rigged up to be the lightsource of a room. The table, a wall, the ceiling-- even something bizarre like a blanket or a couch or place settings or what have you. Combine that with the ability to shift through all the colors of the rainbow, and I think we're looking at the (perhaps somewhat distant) future of interior design.

Read the full story:
http://www.livescience.com/technology/051021_nano_light.html

To learn more about LEDs:
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/led.htm

To learn more about quantum dots:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_dots