Sulfur Lamp

Basics

• A type of light that is similar to a gas discharge lamp, or plasma lamp (neon light), but uses microwaves instead of electrodes
• These thus have a high brightness, yet also a long lifespan
• The main issues have been magnetron life, and how to keep the bulb from overheating (Some models rotate the bulb, circularlly polarized light may work according to some studies)
• Not for small applications, but could be used for projector lights, stage lights, and other high brightness applications

OTS Options

Fusion Lighting Inc.

• Seems to have been one of the original manufacturers, if not the inventor
• May have made the devices used by the USA's Federal Government for things like the Air and Space Museum (need to see if they still use sulfur lamps, also could maybe ask for a Tom Scott esque tour etc)
• A 1999 Electrical Construction & Maintenance Magazine (EC&M) Page Titled "This year's lighting models"
  • Quote:
    • "Three manufacturers now market induction (fluorescent) systems featuring long life, good color, and energy efficacy. They use either an induction coil to create a magnetic field or microwaves to excite the mercury in a lamp in order to produce ultraviolet energy that in turn excites a phosphor coating on the bulb's inside surface. Depending on the lamp, manufacturers make claims for lamp life from 10,000 to 100,000 hours. Lamp life is primarily limited by the degradation of the phosphors.

Called an electrodeless lamp because it lacks either a filament or a metal electrode, the sulfur lamp consists of a golf-ball sized (38mm) quartz glass sphere, or bulb, containing argon gas and a pinch of sulfur at less than one atmosphere. When bombarded with energy from a microwave system, the internal pressure increase to between two and five atmospheres of sulfur vapor, which forms the plasma medium that produces visible light by molecular radiation.

Fiber-optic and light guide illumination systems take advantage of the compact sulfur light source mentioned above. 3M Corp. now offers its Light Pipe technology for use with the Solar 1000 sulfur lamp from Fusion Lighting. The Light Pipe is a hollow acrylic or polycarbonate tube lined with a layer of optical lighting film having a nearly 99% reflectance efficiency. Recent advances in micro-machining and polymer processing of lighting film make the final breakthrough possible. Potential applications include aircraft hangers, tunnel lighting, parking facilities and hazardous location lighting."

Pure Plasma Lighting

• Might be the IP Owner for Hive Lighting's Core Tech?
• Bit unclear

Hive Lighting

• They have since moved on to all LED Lighting, but they sold the following products:

DIY/OS Designs

• No "proper" ones yet, still in the testing phase
• User: Eric here, i reached out to one channel with a promising design (worked except for cooling) for basic testing
• Also the same channel who made a Plasma Toroid Lamp has a discord channel for Tesla Coil / plasma adjacent things from a DIY perspective, got on their to see what people with actual hands on experience / fab capabilities thing

Research Papers

• "A High-Efficiency Indirect Lighting System Utilizing the Solar 1000 Sulfur Lamp

Internal Links

• Plasma Lamp
• Fluorescent Lamp or Electrodeless Fluorescent Lamp
• OLED / Organic field-effect transistor (May be similar in an appropriate materials context, but less complex in use/installation, albeit with a trade off for manufacturing complexity)

External Links

• The Wikipedia Page on Sulfur Lamps
• A Patent Discussing Using Circualarly Polarised microwaves to Make Rotation Unneccisary
• A Video Ad, by a companny offering a sulfur lamp for streetlight applications using more modern magentrons Advertizes 100,000 lifetime (Doesn't mention if they adressed the spinning of the lamp issue)
• A Basic Diy Sulfur Lamp needs to be checked for reliability etc