Blue Light Crystals Give Green Light to Carbon Storage

Very tiny crystals developed by a research team at the University of California at Berkeley are poised to make a big impact on lighting technology and may provide a solution for long-term carbon dioxide storage.

Magnesium oxide is an inexpensive mineral with wide application ranging from use in the manufacture of Portland cement, antacids, fireproofing, and cable insulation.

In its microcrystalline form, it demonstrates a remarkable capacity for the emission of blue light. However, conventional manufacturing of magnesium oxide crystals tends to produce an unpredictable range in the sizes of the final crystals. Means for consistently producing crystals of desired very small size had been wildly energy intensive and inefficient, until the Berkeley team developed a vastly improved method for manufacturing the tiny crystals.

Solid state lighting applications designed to replace inefficient incandescent lighting often involve use of materials that emit red, green, and blue light in balance to create white light. The chemically varied blue-reflecting materials have been difficult and expensive to make. Accordingly, the Berkeley breakthrough holds promise for improving new efficient lighting applications.

Even more exciting, perhaps, is the material's having been found to hold carbon dioxide in a geologically stable manner. These magnesium oxide micro-crystals are poised for further study as a medium for carbon dioxide sequestration. Their inert mineral characteristics make them a possible candidate for very stable, long-term removal and disposal of atmospheric carbon dioxide to respond to changes in global atmosphere and climate, and a topic of research that has been discussed previously here at Tonic.

Tiny crystals, big potential impact: they're shedding light, and they're going after greenhouse gases.

Photo courtesy of Laverrue, via Flickr.