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New development could lead to more effective lightbulbs"
Using nanotechnology, they've built a structure that surrounds the filament of the bulb and captures the leaking infrared radiation, reflecting it back to the filament where it is re-absorbed and then re-emitted as visible light.
The structure is made from thin layers of a type of light-controlling crystal. A key aspect though is the way that these layers are stacked, with visible wavelengths allowed to pass through while infrared get reflected back to the filament as if in a mirror.
"It is not so much the material you make the surrounding structure from, it is how you arrange the material to create the optical filtering property that will recycle infra red light and let the visible light through," Ognjen Illic, the paper's lead author told BBC News.
In theory, the crystal structures could boost the efficiency of incandescent bulbs to 40%, making them three times more efficient than the best LED or CFL bulbs on the market.
So do the researchers think that they can build a better lightbulb?
"I would not exclude the possibility," said Prof Marin Soljacic, another author on the paper.
"Thomas Edison was not the first one to work on the design of the lightbulb, but what he did was figure out how to mass produce it cheaply and keep it stable longer than 10 hours, these are still the the two critical criteria. These are the questions we are trying to answer now," he said.
The scientists point out that improving lightbulbs is but one of the options that could spring from this development. The authors say it could have "dramatic implications" for the performance of other energy conversion technologies.
