Neon lights are utilized in signs, displays, and even airport landing strips because they are colorful, brilliant, and dependable. Have you ever wondered how they function and how various colors of light are produced?
- A neon light is a low-pressure neon light that contains a small amount of neon gas.
- Electricity is used to ionize neon atoms by removing electrons from them. Ions are drawn to the lamp’s terminals, completing the electric circuit.
- When neon atoms obtain enough energy to get excited, light is created. A photon is released when an atom returns to a lower energy state (light).
What Is a Neon Light and How Does It Work?
You can construct your own imitation neon sign, but true neon lights are made out of a glass tube filled with a little amount of neon gas (at low pressure). Because it is one of the noble gases, neon is used. Each atom in these elements has a filled electron shell, which means they don’t react with other atoms and removing an electron requires a lot of energy.
At each end of the tube, there is an electrode. A neon lamp can use either AC (alternating current) or DC (direct current), although the glow is only visible around one electrode when utilizing DC current. The majority of neon lights you see are powered by AC current.
When a high enough electric voltage (about 15,000 volts) is given to the terminals, enough energy is supplied to remove an outer electron from the neon atoms. There will be insufficient kinetic energy for the electrons to depart their atoms if there is insufficient voltage, and nothing will happen. Positively charged neon atoms (cations) are drawn to the negative terminal, while unbound electrons are drawn to the positive terminal. The electric circuit of the lamp is completed by these charged particles, known as plasma.
So, from where does the light come? Atoms in the tube are traveling about and colliding. They exchange energy and generate a lot of heat in the process. While some electrons are able to escape their atoms, others are able to accumulate enough energy to become “stimulated.” This indicates that they are in a higher energy level. Being excited is similar to climbing a ladder, except that an electron may only be on one rung of the ladder at a time. By releasing that energy as a photon, the electron can return to its initial energy (ground state) (light). The hue of the light produced is determined by the distance between the excited energy and the initial energy. This is a fixed interval, similar to the distance between rungs on a ladder. As a result, each excited electron of an atom emits a photon of a specific wavelength. To put it another way, each excited noble gas emits a distinct color of light. This is a reddish-orange neon light.
How Are Other Colors of Light Created?
You may be perplexed by the many varied colors of signage you see. Aside from the orange-red of neon, there are two major approaches to create additional hues of light. To make colors, one method is to employ another gas or a mixture of gases. As previously stated, each noble gas emits a distinct hue of light. Helium, for example, lights pink, krypton glows green, and argon glows blue. Intermediate hues can be created by mixing the gases.
Another method for producing colors is to coat the glass with a phosphor or other chemical that, when activated, will glow a specific color. Because of the variety of coatings available, most current lights are fluorescent lamps with a mercury/argon discharge and phosphor coating rather than neon. It’s a noble gas light if you notice a clear light blazing in a color.
Controlling the energy provided to the light is another approach to vary the hue of the light, albeit it isn’t employed in light fixtures. While you normally only see one color per element in a light, excited electrons have different energy levels that correspond to a spectrum of light that element can create.
The Neon Light’s Brief History
- Heinrich Geissler is a German author (1857)
- Geissler is known as the “Father of Fluorescent Lighting.” His “Geissler Tube” was a glass tube with electrodes on both ends and a partial vacuum gas inside. To produce light, he experimented with arcing current via various gases. The neon light, mercury vapor light, fluorescent light, sodium lamp, and metal halide lamp all started with the tube.
- Morris W. Travers and William Ramsay (1898)
- Ramsay and Travers created a neon lamp, but because neon was highly rare, the concept was not economically viable.
- Moore, Daniel McFarlan (1904)
- Moore commercialized the “Moore Tube,” which produced light by passing an electric arc through nitrogen and carbon dioxide.
- Claude Georges (1902)
- While Claude did not invent the neon lamp, he did invent a way for isolating neon from air, lowering the cost of the light. Georges Claude demonstrated the neon light at the Paris Motor Show in December of 1910. Claude worked with Moore’s design at first, but eventually developed his own reliable lamp design and monopolized the market for the lights until the 1930s.
- Neon Sign Design & Installation
Neon signs can help brand your business whether it be a company logo or for advertising. Custom neon signs can put your company above the rest. Arizona Commercial Signs is a full-service sign company providing expert sign designers, builders, fabricators, and installers serving the Greater Phoenix Metropolitan Area, and surrounding cities.
