Friday, November 18, 2005

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Butterfly wings work like LEDs

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Butterfly wings work like LEDs: "When scientists developed an efficient device for emitting light, they hadn't realised butterflies have been using the same method for 30 million years.

Fluorescent patches on the wings of African swallowtail butterflies work in a very similar way to high emission light emitting diodes (LEDs).

These high emission LEDs are an efficient variation on the diodes used in electronic equipment and displays.

The University of Exeter, UK, research appears in the journal Science.

In 2001, Alexei Erchak and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) demonstrated a method for building a more efficient LED.

Most light emitted from standard LEDs cannot escape, resulting in what scientists call a low extraction efficiency of light."

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