Quantum Dot LEDs: the future of lighting?

[JoeStrout]

We're making progress on the lighting now, so we've returned to this issue.  Re-reading the article above, I'm convinced that this really is the future of lighting (until something even better comes along!).

These new quantum-dot LEDs have power densities about 300 times those of current devices.  And current LED lighting is already really bright — I have a strip of surface-mount LEDs on my workbench right now, and they're almost painful to look at from half a meter away.  But of course we're talking about making a "sky," i.e., lining a roof that may be more like 100 m or more away.  To produce outdoorsy levels of illumination on the ground, we're going to need all the power density (and efficiency, to avoid waste heat) we can get.  It looks to me like these LEDs can deliver.

For High Frontier, the question we're facing at the moment is: how much will panels of this stuff cost?  And I have no good way to estimate that.  But the fabrication process is very encouraging:

Quote:Perhaps the most appealing aspect of the research is that the new LEDs were entirely fabricated through solution-based processing carried out at room temperature and pressure.

That almost certainly translates to "cheap" except in cases where the materials themselves are expensive — but these things are made of conductive polymers and silicon.  Nothing particularly pricey (or hazardous) there as far as I can see.

So we're going to pull a reasonably low cost per square meter out of the air, and tweak it for gameplay balance.  But if anybody has any thoughts on the matter, please do speak up!