This application claims the priority benefit of Taiwan application serial no. 96151533, filed Dec. 31, 2007. The entirety of the above-mentioned patent application is hereby incorporated by reference herein and made a part of this specification.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a light source apparatus, and more particularly, to a surface light source apparatus with dual-side emitting light to produce desired light.
2. Description of Related Art
A light source apparatus is widely used in our daily life. A traditional light source apparatus, for example, a bulb, produces visual light through the filament thereof with a high temperature after turning on. The bulb light source is counted as spot-like light source. After the spot-like light source, a tube-like light source was developed as well. Thereafter, through long time developments and modifications, a surface light source apparatus was lunched, which now is broadly used in, for example, flat displays.
A surface light source works based on various mechanisms.
The above-mentioned two conventional light-emitting mechanisms respectively have advantages and disadvantages of their own. The mechanism based on gas discharge has advantages of structure simplicity and easily light-emitting, but to emit light, it needs to produce plasma first and the light-emitting mechanism is based on secondary energy conversion, which consumes a lot of electrical power. In contrast, the mechanism based on field emission, the corresponding light source is counted as a cold light source similar to a cathode ray tube (CRT), where electrons in high speed within vacuum directly impact fluorescence powder to emit visual light. The second mechanism is advantageous in high luminance, electricity-saving and easiness to form a surface light source structure, but disadvantageous in that the process needs to make an even emission material grow on a cathode or to spread the said material on the cathode, and to implement the process the second mechanism requires a needle-like structure or a carbon nanotube, so that a microstructure with a large aspect ratio (ratio of depth over width) enables the electrons to overcome the work function of the cathode to get rid of the cathode and then travel into a vacuum space. Therefore, the second mechanism is hard to evenly form a cathode structure with large area. In addition, for the second mechanism, the distance between the cathode and the anode for establishing field emission must be accurately controlled, which accordingly requires a strict specification on a spacer structure; plus, the vacuum packaging with the second mechanism is often a worried problem.
Note that the above-mentioned light source apparatuses are targeting the architecture for mono-direction light-emitting. However, such a mono-direction light-emitting apparatus nevertheless has application limitation.
Accordingly, the present invention is directed to a surface light source apparatus with dual-side emitting light served as a lamp source module for lighting or a display apparatus.
According to an embodiment, the present invention provides a surface light source apparatus with dual-side emitting light, which includes a transparent cathode structure, a transparent anode structure, a fluorescent layer and a low-pressure gas layer. The transparent cathode structure and the transparent anode structure are opposite to each other and respectively a surface structure. The fluorescent layer is located between the transparent cathode structure and the transparent anode structure. The low-pressure gas layer fills the space between the transparent cathode structure and the transparent anode structure and functions to induce the cathode evenly emitting electrons, wherein the electron mean free path of the low-pressure gas layer allows at least a sufficient number of electrons to directly impact the fluorescent layer under an operation voltage.
According to an embodiment, the present invention provides another surface light source apparatus with dual-side emitting light, which includes at least a cathode wire structure, a transparent anode structure, a fluorescent layer and a low-pressure gas layer. The transparent anode structure is a surface structure, wherein the cathode wire structure and the transparent anode structure are parallel to each other. The fluorescent layer is located between the cathode wire structure and the transparent anode structure. The low-pressure gas layer fills the space between the cathode wire structure and the transparent anode structure and functions to induce the cathode evenly emitting electrons. The electron mean free path of the low-pressure gas layer allows at least a sufficient number of electrons to directly impact the fluorescent layer under an operation voltage.
According to an embodiment, the present invention provides yet another surface light source apparatus with dual-side emitting light, which includes a first transparent substrate, a second transparent substrate, a spacer, a low-pressure gas layer, a cathode structure and an anode structure. The spacer is disposed between the first transparent substrate and the second transparent substrate to construct a space. The low-pressure gas layer fills the space and functions to induce the cathode evenly emitting electrons. The cathode structure and the anode structure are disposed on the first transparent substrate. A fluorescent structure layer is disposed on the first transparent substrate and located between the cathode structure and the anode structure. The electron mean free path of the low-pressure gas layer allows at least a sufficient number of electrons for transverse moving and to directly impact the fluorescent layer under an operation voltage.
According to an embodiment, the present invention provides yet another surface light source apparatus with dual-side emitting light, which includes a first conductive transparent substrate and a second conductive transparent substrate opposite to each other, and the two conductive transparent substrates are respectively served as an anode structure. A fluorescent structure layer is located on the first conductive transparent substrate and the second conductive transparent substrate. A spacer is located between the first conductive transparent substrate and the second conductive transparent substrate to construct a space. A low-pressure gas layer fills the space and functions to induce the cathode evenly emitting electrons. A filamentary cathode structure is distributed on a plane between the first conductive transparent substrate and the second conductive transparent substrate. The electron mean free path of the low-pressure gas layer allows at least a sufficient number of electrons for transverse moving and to directly impact the fluorescent layer under an operation voltage.
The accompanying drawings are included to provide a further understanding of the invention, and are incorporated in and constitute a part of this specification. The drawings illustrate embodiments of the invention and, together with the description, serve to explain the principles of the invention.
Reference will now be made in detail to the present preferred embodiments of the invention, examples of which are illustrated in the accompanying drawings. Wherever possible, the same reference numbers are used in the drawings and the description to refer to the same or like parts.
The present invention provides a surface light source apparatus with dual-side emitting light, which is able to achieve light-emitting effect by controlling the vacuum level of the gas based on the electron emission mechanism. In addition, in association with properly disposing transparent electrodes and transparent substrates, the present invention achieves dual-side emitting light. The mechanism the present invention adopts makes the process of fabricating a surface light source apparatus with dual-side evenly emitting light simpler. Moreover, by properly selecting fluorescent materials, the present invention can produce a surface UV light source or a light source with other wavelengths such as visual light or infrared light as well. In addition to the applications of lighting and decoration, the surface light source apparatus with dual-side emitting light of the present invention can be served as a light source for a display. The material of the transparent substrate can be a hard material or a flexible material. The surface light source apparatus can be planar one or curve one depending on a real need. In the following, several embodiments, but not limited by the present invention, are explained. In a real application, the depicted embodiments in follows can be combined for use or individually used.
The light source apparatus provided by the present invention takes advantage of gas conductive characteristic to educe sufficient electrons out of the cathode. While the electrons are travelling in the thin gas, due to a longer electron mean free path of the thin gas, there are still sufficient electrons in the travel end to directly impact, for example, the fluorescence powder on the anode to excite the fluorescence powder for emitting light, wherein the fluorescence powder is able to be excited to emit light. If UV is needed, the element proportion of the fluorescence powder can be adjusted to emit UV light, for example, the light in wavelength of 100 nm-400 nm. In addition, the luminous intensity can be controlled by adjusting the voltage.
A transparent cathode structure 206 of the present invention is disposed on the transparent substrate 200 and a transparent anode structure 208 is disposed on the transparent substrate 202. The spacers 204 are disposed between the transparent substrates 200 and 202 to form a space to accommodate a low-pressure gas layer. The space herein can be divided into a plurality of smaller spaces or a single one without dividing, which depends on an application need without specific limitation. The transparent material is, for example, indium tin oxide (ITO), indium zinc oxide (IZO) or other common materials of transparent conductive oxides.
The transparent cathode structure 206 and the transparent anode structure 208 are, for example, opposite to each other and respectively a surface structure. In general, a fluorescent layer 210 is located between the transparent cathode structure 206 and the transparent anode structure 208, and preferably disposed on the transparent anode structure 208. The low-pressure gas layer fills the space between the transparent cathode structure 206 and the transparent anode structure 208 for inducting the cathode to evenly emit electrons. The electron mean free path of the low-pressure gas layer allows at least sufficient electrons to directly impact the fluorescent layer under an operation voltage. The pressure of the low-pressure gas layer ranges between 10-10−3 torr, and the gas in the low-pressure gas layer includes, for example, for example, inert gases, atmosphere, He, Ne, Ar, Kr, Xe, H2 or CO2. The optimized pressure is depends on the gas and the distance between cathode and anode.
The educed electrons 212 in the low-pressure gas layer are accelerated to move towards the transparent anode structure 208. Due to a longer electron mean free path of the thin gas, there are still sufficient electrons 212 in the travel end to directly impact the fluorescent layer 210. On the other hand, the ionized positive gas ions 214 in the low-pressure gas layer would travel towards the transparent cathode structure 206 and impact the cathode, which also contributes for producing and increasing the secondary electrons 216. The way to effectively produce secondary electrons is depicted in later. Usually, different pressure requires a different operation voltage, wherein the luminance is increased with an increasing operation voltage and they are subject to a linear relationship.
The transparency property of the transparent substrates 200 and 202 enables the light 218 and 220 produced by the fluorescent layer 210 to travel through the transparent substrates 200 and 202 to achieve the effect of dual-side light-emitting.
The fluorescent layer 210 can be a mono-layer structure. However, the fluorescent layer 210 can also be, for example, an overlapped layer structure or a mixed layers structure, depending on the different fluorescent layer. Both the overlapped layer structure and the mixed layer structure are made of different fluorescent materials, wherein the overlapped layer structure is composed of, for example, a plurality of layers of different fluorescent layer materials to produce blended light, for example, white light blended bye and they are subject red light, green light and blue light. The mixed layers structure is a plurality of fluorescent layers in different colors are disposed at different regions to respectively produce light corresponding to a defined frequency to achieve a light-blending effect. In addition, except for the visual light materials, the fluorescent layer can use infrared material or UV material.
The above-mentioned surface light source apparatus with dual-side emitting light is a basic structure only. In order to promote the luminous efficiency, an additional auxiliary function layer is disposed on the transparent cathode structure 206 or the transparent anode structure 208.
In the embodiment of
Although in
The fluorescent layer in the above-mentioned embodiment is designed as a surface structure, but it can be modified as well.
A fluorescent layer includes, for example, a plurality of fluorescence mono-bodies, wherein the surface of each fluorescence mono-body has a fluorescent material layer. The fluorescence mono-body 295 is, for example, a sphere-like fluorescence mono-body and the surface of each fluorescence mono-body 295 has a fluorescent material layer; the fluorescence mono-body 295 can be a cylinder-like fluorescence mono-body and the surface thereof has a fluorescent material layer as well. In the embodiment, electrons move in a direction as shown by an arrow and the electrons are transverse moving. Since both the transparent substrates 290 and 298 are transparent, the produced light is emitted from the two sides.
Similarly to
Since the cathode wire structure 310 is, for example, a filamentary structure, thus, does not affect the light-emitting quality.
In the same way, the present invention can have other modifications.
The surface light source apparatus with dual-side emitting light provided by the present invention can be further applied to dual-side image displaying or curve surface image displaying.
It will be apparent to those skilled in the art that various modifications and variations can be made to the structure of the present invention without departing from the scope or spirit of the invention. In view of the foregoing, it is intended that the present invention cover modifications and variations of this invention provided they fall within the scope of the following claims and their equivalents.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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96151533 | Dec 2007 | TW | national |