As LED lighting is becoming increasingly M30S+ popular in architectural lighting, task lighting, medical lighting (particularly for use in surgical theatres), transportation, entertainment, and even household lighting. This article intends to be a comprehensive guide to their utility, what the advantages that LED lighting possesses over other types of lighting and how to select an appropriate power source for the LED lights.

First, what IS an LED light? A light-emitting diode (LED) is an electronic light source. LED’s are based on the semiconductor diode. When the diode is forward biased (switched on), electrons are able to recombine with holes and energy is released in the form of light. This effect is called electroluminescence and the color of the light is determined by the energy gap of the semiconductor.

LED’s present many advantages over traditional light sources including lower energy consumption, longer lifetime, improved robustness, smaller size ( enabling LED’s to be easily populated onto printed circuit boards.) and faster switching (LED’s light up very quickly. A typical red indicator LED will achieve full brightness in microseconds, and LED’s used in communications devices can have even faster response times.). Thus their utility value is very high.

Maybe the greatest advantage of all is that as the color of the light depends on a specific variable (i.e.- the energy gap of the semiconductor) thus LED’s can emit light of an intended color without the use of color filters that traditional lighting methods require. This is more efficient and can lower initial costs for a vast range of applications which previously used the colour filtering process.

Further advantages of LED’s exist, among them efficiency of an LED is prominent. LED’s produce more light per watt than incandescent bulbs, and wastage of energy is minimal, as LED’s radiate very little heat in the form of IR that can cause damage to sensitive objects or fabrics. Wasted energy is dispersed as heat through the base of the LED. Further as light is emitted from a solid state material, greater shock absorption capability is present in the LED lights. Further, LED’s do not contain mercury, unlike most fluorescent lamps.