Today, old Technologies have new chances of revitalization. The “easy” connectivity of technical knowledge gives new opportunities to business developers to revamp quiet industries in traditional sectors. They have the chance to revitalize their old and traditional markets by merging their technologies with new and “sparkling” ones. How come is that possible?. Well we can answer in short way, saying “easily”, by just mixing and transferring technical advancements form different business sectors to the traditional one. But in reality these transfers are not so easy or straightforward tasks. They require and depend on several technologies advancements as it is explained below in a nice example.
Not long ago, it was not possible to consider the possibility to laminate light bulbs between glass. Even though the more clever and brilliant glass business developers were able to envision illuminated glass laminates. Nobody could come out from the idea of selling these glass products because the available light bulbs to make this kind of products were too big to be accommodated into the two glass pieces. They were fragile and no way to shrink them to make them fit conveniently. The cables connection were also a big problem. How to hide them?. And even if it had been possible to squeeze a bit the light bulbs a bit, then another problem would come up: How to make the light bulbs to survive to the pressure and the temperature lamination conditions. Not so long ago this was not possible to produce such a fancy product, and moreover there was no way to foresee a way to make it happen in short period time.
Today we are able to do that, and do it well. And this is thanks to some technology advances not related to glass. Recent physics and electronic engineering advancements on diodes performance have catalyzed the possibility to manufacture light glass laminates. The excellent work of some Scientist and Technologists brought to life the Light Emission Diodes (LEDs).
This story started 50th years ago, when the LEDs light, due to an electroluminescence process, was discovered by two scientist of Texas Instruments in 1961. Bob Biard and Gary Pittman found out that when they applied electricity to a semiconductor diode made form Galium Arsenide (GaAs) the chip was able to emit IR radiation, a frequency radiation that was not visible to human eyes. The first practical use of the IR LED was to built the long distance control devices. Yes, the ones that we use to practice zapping with our TVs and to open the doors of our cars automatically.
One year later, during 1962, Nick Holonyak at GE labs in New York was able to develop the firs LED capable to generate visible IR light.
Since then it took then years more, until 1972 when George Craford constructed the first yellow light LED. This was also 10 times brighter than the previous ones.
wenty years later, in the nineties, the Japanese Scientist Shuki Nakamura developed the green color LEDs and also the blue one, opening the door to the production of the white LEDs. The combination of the three colors, the red, green and blue with the same intensities of light gives the white color and new practical applications like the big TV screens and panels.
Since then, their sizes, their bright properties, light efficiency, their reliability and robustness have been opening a wide degree of opportunities to different products in different markets. One of them is the “traditional” glass industry, the subject of this paper.
But these new advances were not enough to be used by the glass industry. It was the need that other technical fields provide some more “help to the glass/bulbs team”. The second key contributions for this to happen came from the Polymer Science field. The second “sparkling tech”. New materials have been developed to be able to connect the LEDs, make them power, and to integrate all the pieces together.
We, at NovoGenio, have been working on these new product developments by designing, formulating and manufacturing some or all of the films that are part of the laminated glass core. With our films it is possible to laminate LEDs between glass, making the process easy, reliable and obtaining excellent products. Are you ready to integrate these new advances in your process and products? If you are, we can help you speed up. To know more about our contributions and how you can implement them into your processes and products just let us know.
LEDs cover today the small bulbs that are needed to produce lighting glass products. With them and the right optical films, it has been possible to obtain glass laminated products that are:
- Reliable
- Durable
- Energetic efficient (they might produce energy savings between 70-80% of old light systems.
- and they generate low heat when working
Moreover they have: Good optics Good mechanical properties.
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