The paper discusses the advantages and challenges of reflectors which are vacuum coated with Silver instead of Aluminum. Coating of reflectors in car lights with Silver offers the double advantage of increased device efficiency and lower thermal load. Considering that LED headlights still require multiple light sources to match the performance of their Xenon or Halogen competitors, every possible percent of light that LEDs produce should be delivered to the road instead of being converted to heat inside the head light. Further, for conventionally powered headlamps expensive materials that are used merely to tolerate the heat load produced by the light sources, could be avoided. In a headlamp device with two reflective elements for beam shaping Silver coated reflector surfaces increase the overall device efficiency by 9.1 % (or more, if the Aluminum coating is of poor quality). At the same time the heat load to the reflectors due to absorption is reduced by 50 %. Silver competes with Aluminum as a cheap, mature coating material. In order to utilize Silver in the automotive industry, traditional performance testing and may have to be reevaluated against todays requirements. As a result further (co )development of the manufacturing methods may be necessary until a mature technology like Aluminum can be fully replaced by Silver. However, the benefits in performance will be well worth the efforts.


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    Title :

    Applications of highly reflective silver coatings for car headlamp reflectors


    Contributors:


    Publication date :

    2009


    Size :

    6 Seiten, 3 Bilder, 3 Quellen



    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Print


    Language :

    English




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