Lighting consumes roughly 22 percent of United States
electricity, a roughly $50 billion per year cost to the U.S.
consumer. Solid-state lighting (SSL) is an emerging technology
with the potential to reduce that energy consumption by a factor
of 3–6 times. Despite a decade’s enormous progress, however, SSL
remains a factor of 5–10 times away from this potential.
Sandia’s Solid-State Lighting Science (SSLS) Center, a DOE
Office of Science (SC) Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC),
will accelerate advances in this fundamental science by
exploring energy conversion in tailored photonic structures.
Drawing on Sandia’s long history of SSL R&D, and working closely
with its university and industry partners, the SSLS EFRC will -
work to 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; and - study energy co