Novel lightguide technology gives high brightness and even coverage

The designers at Diverse have developed a novel technique to provide illumination over an area. In its simplest form, the area might be a plate-shaped lightguide such as is used for LCD backlights. The technique naturally works with a slim plate, so designs can be realised that take up minimum depth. For this example, light would be projected into the sides and, using a combination of computer designed diffusing elements, guided out of the front face of the plate and into say the back of an LCD. This technique can be extremely efficient, practical examples have realised ~70%.

The same technology can be used with more complex shapes and surfaces, such as car lighting, signage and effects lighting. In these applications, the lightguide plate can be warped or blended to any shape that fits the overall design. The really neat aspect of the Diverse technology is that even with a complex shape, the brightness of the emission can be specified directly, whether it is to produce an evenly distributed illumination, distributed with some specific gradient, or even emit with a pseudo image. The technique has been used with high brightness LEDs as the source light, as their illumination profiles are well matched to the technique.

In production, the cost of the system is low, as the major components can be moulded and simply processed using a combination of printed circuit board manufacture and printing methodologies. Using these well established manufacturing techniques, complex lighting arrangements can be realised at low cost. Indeed, because the system is precise, a large lighting requirement can be built using multiple lightguides, and the resulting illumination profile will show negligible inter-guide patches.

The system has already been used to provide backlighting in aircraft cockpits and is actively being pursued for signage. Diverse would be pleased to discuss with interested parties how to use this technology in their industry to provide competitive advantage.

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