Welcome

Welcome to the official website for Sandia National Laboratories’ Energy Frontier Research Center for Solid-State Lighting Science! Sandia’s center is one of 46 new multi-million dollar EFRCs funded by the Department of Energy Office of Science. These centers are a means to enlist the talents and skills of the very best American scientists and engineers to address current fundamental scientific roadblocks to U.S. energy security.  Lighting consumes roughly 22% of U.S. electricity, a roughly $50 billion/year cost to the U.S. consumer. Solid-state lighting is an emerging technology with the potential to reduce that energy consumption by a factor of 3 to 6 times. Despite a decade’s enormous progress, however, solid-state lighting remains a factor of 5 to 10 times away from this potential.

Objectives

The SSLS center team will accelerate advances in this fundamental science by exploring energy conversion in tailored photonic structures. Drawing on Sandia’s long history of solid-state lighting research and development, and working closely with its university and industry partners, the center will:

• Understand the mechanisms and defects in SSL semiconductor materials that presently limit the energy efficiency
• Investigate conversion of electricity to light using radically new designs, such as luminescent nanowires, quantum dots, and hybrid architectures
• Study energy conversion processes in structures whose sizes are even smaller than the wavelength of light

The Center aims to lay the scientific groundwork, now, that will enable achieving the upper-end potential of solid-state lighting 10 to 20 years from now.

Research Thrusts