The world's first LED made from rice husk

 Hiroshima: In a fascinating effort, Japanese experts have for the first time developed a light emitting LED from rice husk, a low-cost, environmentally friendly invention.

Around the world, 100 million tons of rice husk or straw is produced every year during rice cleaning. Scientists at Hiroshima University have now recycled the waste shell to create the world's first silicon quantum dot (QD) and have developed LEDs. In this way, agricultural waste can be converted into cheap and sophisticated diodes.

The research is published in the American Chemical Society's journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering.

Traditional quantum dots usually use cadmium, lead and other toxic metals. But with the new technology of rice husk, this work has become less toxic and environmentally friendly.

Porous silicones (SIs) emerged in the 1950's and paved the way for their lithium-ion batteries, luminous materials and medical sensors. They are present in nature factories and can be used as semiconductors due to their quantum size.

Due to environmental concerns, scientists have long been looking for environmentally friendly quantum dots. Now, according to Japanese experts, rice husk can provide very pure silica (SiO2) and powder which is of very high quality.

The experts first went through the process of grinding and grinding the peel, in which some organic matter was burned and separated. In the third stage, it was further refined by a complex chemical process and converted into particles of three nanometers. Now came the solid and chemically finer particles that melted into silicon quantum dots. At this point, they began to emit an orange-red color with an efficiency of up to 20%.

Thus the world's first rice husk LED was made which did not contain any harmful ingredients. This is a great way to create an eco-friendly LED that consists of silicon quantum dots.

In the next phase, some materials were applied to the LEDs in which indium tin oxide (ITO) glass substrate played the role of anode of the LED and proved to be a good conductor of electricity. This is how transparent LEDs are made. As far as the cathode is concerned, it is coated with aluminum.

Based on silicon quantum dots, these LEDs can be a hope for the future and developing countries can also manufacture them locally. However, the same team is trying to make better quality LEDs.