Integrating SiO2 nanoparticles to achieve color uniformity and luminous efficiency enhancement for white light emitting diodes

A phosphor structure with SiO2 nanoparticles is proposed to achieve the enhancement in the correlated color temperature (CCT) homogeneity and the luminescence performance for white light-emitting diodes (WLEDs). As SiO2 is integrated into the phosphorus compound, the scattering effect of this material contributes to better blue-light utilization. Thus, this innovative packaging design results in a significant increased lumen efficiency, more than 12%, in comparison with that of conventional dispensing ones. Meanwhile, the angular CCT deviation also decreases considerably, from 522 K to 7 K, between the angles of -70 and 700. Moreover, this reduction leads to the diminishment of yellow ring phenomenon effect. In addition, the measurement of haze demonstrates that there is a strong scattering in the visible spectrum when SiO2 is added into the silicone film. Besides that, when increasing the driving current, SiO2 stabilizes the chromaticity coordinate shift, which is a vital requirement for indoor lighting applications. Furthermore, SiO2 nanoparticles own excellent optical features, cost efficiency, and simple production will probably turn this material into a potential material in advancing the optical performance of WLEDs

Pedestrian lane detection for assistive navigation of blind people

Navigating safely in outdoor environments is a challenging activity for vision-impaired people. This paper is a step towards developing an assistive navigation system for the blind. We propose a robust method for detecting the pedestrian marked lanes at traffic junctions. The proposed method includes two stages: regions of interest (ROI) extraction and lane marker verification. The ROI extraction is performed by using colour and intensity information. A probabilistic framework employing multiple geometric cues is then used to verify the extracted ROI. The experimental results have shown that the proposed method is robust under challenging illumination conditions and obtains superior performance compared to the existing methods. © 2012 ICPR Org Committee