

Ultra-efficient LED puts out more power than is pumped in - amitt
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-03/09/230-percent-efficient-leds

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fancyketchup
The headline is inaccurate. The LED outputs more power than the _electrical_
power input. The remainder of the energy comes in the form of heat from the
surrounding environment. It works by applying slightly less voltage than the
LED's bandgap and then relying on electron-phonon coupling to kick an electron
to an orbital above the band gap.

That kills off a quanta of energy from whatever phonon mode gave the kick
(which cools the LED), and the electron emits a photon when it relaxes back
into the valence band. The LED is no longer in thermodynamic equilibrium with
the surrounding environment, so heat flows into the LED.

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MiguelHudnandez
Considering the expense we go to in order to cool things down, could this be
scaled up to provide us with a light source and a cheaper way to cool things?

Right now, most energy that becomes heat is considered wasted because of
limited applications in turning that heat back into usable energy.

~~~
songgao
That's what I'm thinking too. The first thing I thought of when reading about
it was refrigerator/air-conditioner

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serf
the powers that be curate certain titles that sound incorrect, but not the
ones that ARE incorrect..

