On 12/3/2012 4:50 PM, Warren Smith wrote:
The news hype media is full of stuff about how David Carroll, prof. at Wake Forest Univ. in NC, has invented new wondrous lighting technology, environmentally friendly, efficient as LEDs and "at least twice as efficient as fl.tubes," but simpler and looks better, wholy solid state, simple, most any shape (sheets, rods, bent rods,...), glowing capacitor using magic nanoparticles embedded in plastic, no toxic mercury like fl.tube has, long lived (>10 years), will be commercialized with in 1 year.
I tracked it to this press release http://news.wfu.edu/2012/12/03/taking-the-buzz-out-of-office-lights/ and this pre-paper of some ilk: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1566119912004831
What the media hype machine never mentioned in about 10 articles I saw, but is revealed in the latter document, is that they incorporate substantial amounts of Iridium and Indium. That sounds like an immediate major lose right there.
Why? Indium is fairly common. Iridium is relatively rare, but it's still plentiful enough to use it in spark plug electrodes. Brent