UH researchers' new prototype LED lightbulb emits less of that troublesome blue light

LED lightbulbs offer considerable advantages over other types of lighting. Being more efficient, they require much less electricity to operate.

But LEDs are not problem-free. Questions linger over suspected links between health concerns such as fatigue, mood disorders, and insomnia from overexposure to the blue-tinted light produced by today's standard LED bulbs. Plus, higher prices can prompt lightbulb shoppers to weigh other options.

A University of Houston research team led by Jakoah Brgoch, associate professor of chemistry in the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics and principal investigator in the Texas Center for Superconductivity, is developing an LED bulb that emits most of its energy from the safer violet segment of the visible light spectrum. Instead of just masking the blue light, they are developing a unique class of luminescent materials called phosphors that absorb a violet LED's single-color emission and convert the light to cover the majority of the visible spectrum.

The group is creating phosphors that operate, not with the conventional blue LED chip that nearly every LED light bulb uses today, but with a violet LED chip. This basically moves away from blue to violet as the base source and then converts the violet LED light into the broad-spectrum white light that we see.