So I was sitting at home playing jacks and I couldn’t get out of my head how the Luxim bulbs can possibly be so efficient. It must be some sort of voodoo magic. So I did some more research, of what little there was, and found a little animation on the mechanism that causes this little Tic-Tac sized bit of glass to emit this enormous amount of light.
So apparently the way these things work is that it’s like a cross between a halogen and a fluorescent. With halogens, the filament material heats up (much like a standard incandescent bulb) and microscopic bits evaporates into the high pressure bulb. With fluorescents, a plasma is formed that emits electrons onto a phosphor to create visible light.
Now with the Luxim, the plasma is created from the gas, and then some metal halide elements in the bulb evaporate (assuming because of the heat from the plasma) and that combination of plasma and evaporated metal halide creates a light that could blind even a deity.
You can take a look at the animation and the description of it.
It looks pretty amazing with some just as amazing claims. The heatsink and heating mechanism looks ridiculously big though, from the picture, so it seems like it may be a while till it’s ready for prime time. I’d be totally interested in seeing one in real life and how it compares to LED lights. Though from what I read into mechanism of how the bulb gets heated up and the temperatures, I’ll make sure to wear my codpiece at the viewing.
