Seoul P5 RGB (re: smart ways to do RGB)

[Novastar]

Ok, now people... don't be thinking I'm posting this expecting to see the big honker in a saber. Maybe someday, but... the point of this thread is to show that the idea of arranging the dies in a STAGGERED form would be much much MUCH more intelligent vs. putting Red "over there" then green "over there" then Blue "over there".

http://youtube.com/watch?v=F0C9qR5rWgY

Granted... that will NOT be an easy thing to do (as near as *I* understand LED technology) while still keeping everything TINY TINY SMALL.

This also goes to show that Eandori is probably right on the mark to say that "SINGLE" LEDs (which btw, are really multiple "dies" ANYWAY) are more likely to benefit the saber community over time vs. most RGBs.

I hope we're wrong though. :) I hope that SOMEone is able to invent the RGB LED that is super small, and yet the colors can be staggered or "matrixed" or whatever you want to say, such as the following:

........DIE 1.................DIE 2..................DIE 3.......
RGB RGB RGB .. RGB RGB RGB .. RGB RGB RGB
RGB RGB RGB .. RGB RGB RGB .. RGB RGB RGB
RGB RGB RGB .. RGB RGB RGB .. RGB RGB RGB

........DIE 4.............CENTER 5...............DIE 6........
RGB RGB RGB .. RGB RGB RGB .. RGB RGB RGB
RGB RGB RGB .. RGB RGB RGB .. RGB RGB RGB
RGB RGB RGB .. RGB RGB RGB .. RGB RGB RGB

........DIE 7.................DIE 8..................DIE 9.......
RGB RGB RGB .. RGB RGB RGB .. RGB RGB RGB
RGB RGB RGB .. RGB RGB RGB .. RGB RGB RGB
RGB RGB RGB .. RGB RGB RGB .. RGB RGB RGB

Of course... this would be pretty tough to do... even with current technologies.

But you could ALSO do the following--which is what I'm guessing the P5 is all about...

........DIE 1.................DIE 2.................DIE 3........
RRR RRR RRR .. GGG GGG GGG .. BBB BBB BBB
RRR RRR RRR .. GGG GGG GGG .. BBB BBB BBB
RRR RRR RRR .. GGG GGG GGG .. BBB BBB BBB

........DIE 4.............CENTER 5...............DIE 6.......
GGG GGG GGG .. BBB BBB BBB .. RRR RRR RRR
GGG GGG GGG .. BBB BBB BBB .. RRR RRR RRR
GGG GGG GGG .. BBB BBB BBB .. RRR RRR RRR

........DIE 7.................DIE 8.................DIE 9........
BBB BBB BBB .. RRR RRR RRR .. GGG GGG GGG
BBB BBB BBB .. RRR RRR RRR .. GGG GGG GGG
BBB BBB BBB .. RRR RRR RRR .. GGG GGG GGG

There is still a problem though, since it would STILL mean that each die would need to be isolated separately... and connected to its corresponding "correct" color die "buddies".

But anyhow--this kind of thing represents what some old style "pixels" used to look like on TVs. In some ways... they are still represented in essentially the same way.

Thoughts, anyone?

[Hasid Lafre]

There was a thing on how its made that was someting along these lines.

[Eandori]

Hey guys,

The staggered layout your showing is exactly where it's headed I think. The issue is the routing of the electrical traces, and the doping process. Some background is probably needed before that makes sense.

Silicon in crystal form does not conduct electricity very well. A process called "doping" is used to literally imbed charged particles of certain types into the silicon. Some of those particles are + charged, some are - charged.... positive and negative. Referred to as "P" and "N".

When you want to run current around on a piece of silicon, layers of aluminum or copper etc. are created on the surface of the silicon. Usually, it's done in a single uniform layer, then a layer of material called "photoresist" is placed over the metal. The image of your circuit is projected onto the photoresist layer (much like a projector does to a movie screen). The areas of light/dark change the photoresist chemically. Then acid is used to strip away either the ligth or dark photoresist. Then you can either add more layers of metal, or use a different acid to strip away the exposed metal underneath. When you get down to the bare silicon, you can blast charged particles at exposed areas to "dope" the silicon. Very difficult to explain quickly, but in short it's like using masking tape when you paint. Cover the areas you don't want paint in, paint, then remove the tape. Etc.

A diode... (which is what an LED is...) is a P/N junction. A section of postively doped silicon, next to a section of negatively doped silicon. Now based on the TYPE of doping material you use (and a few other small things I'm not learned on...) you get a certain frequency of light that emits. Blue and Purple were very hard to obtain for awhile because they require Gallium Arsenide as the doping material which was harder to come by and more hazerdous.

So now, coming back to Novastar's post...

To create 3 different colors of LED on a single dye, that silicon dye needs to be put through the process 3 times. It's much easier to do one entire batch of red, then another batch of blue, then another batch of green. Cut them into small sections, add them next to each other under one bulb. Because each of those colors goes through the process once instead of 3 times. A messed up run only loses one set of colors, instead of a single sheet that takes 3 times more work. So... the process of creating different colored LED on a single dye requires different doping material and that triples your production cost per unit.

Now... about the traces.

Say you want to turn on green. Before you just applied a DC voltage across the + and - leads of a section of silicon. The small traces between each piece of silicon were already in the silicon itself and one PN junction is in series/parallel with others. That makes the "routing" of wiring on the silicon very easy. But now... you want to turn on just green when it's surrounded by red/blue. The wires need to avoid those colors and only connect the greens. That's like 3 times the wiring required to reach those tiny diodes on the silicon. So you can either add more layers of routing (very expensive in silicon) or you can space out the tiny diodes to allow room for wiring on like 2 layers of routing.

So you either have a very expensive yet densly packed tri-color blended luxeon style LED. Or you have a much less expensive, but not as bright (because less densely packed) luxeon style LED.

Now... EVEN IF you do everything the expensive way, you still only have 1/3 the surface area which was originally for a single color devoted to that color. There is only so much room under that tiny clear bulb on a Luxeon. Any tri-color will be easily beaten in brightness by a single color.

Now... when does that no longer matter? When the LED's are SO BRIGHT that we don't even turn them on all the way. THAT is when it won't matter and a tri-color can go toe to toe with our single color solutions. Because the single color was only turned on 33% and the tri-color was 100% brightness. Personally, I would say that our LED's are not even close to that point. I would guess it would need to be something like 2000 lumen per LED before we start not running them 100%. Even a Hyperblade (which measured out to like 3 times more Lux then our Luxeons...) was still not so bright that I wanted to turn it down.

Sorry I don't have any graphics to show what I was describing. But hopefully my post made sense.

Cheers guys :)

[Novastar]

It does make sense, Edwin... at least, to me.

But yeah, that is pretty much what I was pointing at with all my colored mumbo-jumbo, heheheh! :) The only real advantage I see to doing the "mixture" way is just for OPTICAL solutions in my opinion. Not so much brightness.

My entire point was really about how the Rebel (for example)... is just too damn hard to do the optics on. Sure, I guess some results can be had that are DECENT, but... if it were all under ONE dome (sorta like the Prolight is it??) like some LEDs... it would be better optically.

Although that's kind of a big "duh", huh? :D :rolleyes:

[Novastar]

Something just came to mind...

Multiplexing anyone? :)

I remembered this from a recent "study up" I was doing about LEDs, and found it to be interesting. For those unfamiliar with the basic concept of multiplexing (for LEDs), just go look it up instead of de-railing the thread... I'd like to see where this thread could really go. Maybe it will be a very good idea for future RGB setups if the dies somehow work this way, or can be MADE to work this way.

It even gives me some other ideas for using current RGBs! :)