Types of Electroluminescence

Electroluminescence comes in many forms, you may have seen electroluminescence in your daily life many times without even realizing it. It is often used as a soft glowing backlight in cd players, phones, watches, and other consumer devices often in a natural blue or green color.

There are many different brands for electroluminescence, just as Velcro is a brand referring to hook and loop fasteners due to its widespread popularity and first marketed brand many today will still commonly refer to any hook and loop fastener as Velcro. In the same way many early adopter of electroluminescence have not revealed the true naming of the invention but instead have rebranded the technology under their own copyrighted brand often giving the appearance of inventor or some kind of proprietary ownership of the technology itself. Eventually the market is saturated with many different brands and with the widespread internet the technology can easily be found out and understood by anyone nowadays as electroluminescence.

Electroluminescence in its two main forms are as EL panel or EL wire. Both variations have their own unique applications, advantages and disadvantages when comparing to each other.  Both versions being electrolummineescence are cold lighting with low power consumption and have a beautiful soft neon glowing color.

EL panel is very flat thin profile as thin as 1mm it is so thin it can be applied to a surface without needed additional preparation for embedding. It is flexible and can be placed on round columns or curved surfaces.  It can be cut or manufactured into different shapes and sizes. It is lightweight and covenant to mount to almost any surface.  It can be segmented during manufacture and the segments can be sequenced to light up and create an animation effect so is possible to get animated logos and fun animated designs such as equalizer shirt. The applications for animated signs and novelty’s such as t-shirts, safety vest, strip or decorative lighting, EL posters, billboards, signs, POP displays, automotive signs and many more amazing applications.

EL wire is from 1.2-5mm thick and great for costume lighting, it is very flexible and can be bent in shaper angles and more directional angles than electroluminescence  tape or el ribbon flat panel. It is also great for strip lighting or safety lighting along pathways.

In the future a third form of electroluminescence will become more popular as thermoformed variation in which different custom injection mould shapes can be created which the EL panel is adhere to the shape. Therefore traditional limitations of the flat EL panel restricted to placement onto flat surfaces will be eliminated.

Electroluminescent wire made in China.

Electroluminescent wire has not been around as long as el panel but because of its flexibility and unique properties it has quickly became very popular. EL wire is similar to regular wire in its flexibility it is basically a copper core conductor coated with el phosphor and has some protective shield to protect thin filament wires from touching the main conductor wire and another thicker outer protective colored shield.

EL wire can be sewn around costumes using a special wire with an L shaped edge protruding from its side. It can be glued to surfaces or sewn around surfaces. It can be used as decoration strips or pathway lighting in movie theaters. Because electroluminescent wire can be cut and then easy to use some heat shrink wrap to seal the exposed area many small hobbyist or DIY persons will enjoy customizing anything from their computer case to their car seats.

It will require a little patience to work with the el wire the thin filaments are easy to break thus often need of re-cutting the wire to expose additional leads to connect  your lead wire this often can result in your wire being too short if you did not plan for this in advance.  For big projects it’s better to request that the connections for the electroluminescent wire be made in advance at the factory before shipping.

EL wire can come in different diameter gauge thickness from 1.2mm to 5mm, this is the main limitation of el wire that often for decorative lighting compared to EL strip which can be ordered in larger sizes like 50mm, 100mm and much larger if needed.

If a rapid blinking is applied to the Electroluminescent wire it can create an amazing strobing effect.  Like a strobe light it can be made to appear as a strange stop motion effect and when spinning can create appearance of light trails.

Two or more colors can be wrapped around each other to create a multi colored string of light. EL wire can be tie strapped around metal shapes like reindeer or Santa sled to create interesting lawn ornaments like EL Christmas decorations. Besides novelty electroluminescent wire can have any safety use such as pathway lighting or on safety vest. There is also abstract use such as modern painting that incorporate EL wire into the canvas. 

Although glass neon tube may be more beautiful for sign and wall art electroluminescent wire is a cheaper and less likely to break and it is also very beautiful. The el wire can be used in many applications that glass tube neon never could imagine so it is a great alternative to neon in a glass tube format in many examples. Both technologies have their own advantage and unique applications and it is great we have so many options.

EL Light

It is difficult to describe the beauty of EL light, it is really something you must see in person to understand, it is beautiful like glass neon but flexible and has the ability during production to segment and sequence the segments lighting pattern.

EL light originally was most often used for backlight into consumer devices like watch or CD player or beeper. Nowadays it is used in many different applications from costumes, novelty items, advertising, POP displays, promotional items, home computer items, safety items and many more.

EL is short for electroluminescent. Unique properties of EL light in panel form its thin just a little thicker than paper, its cold to the touch even when turned on for long time, its flexible, ability to segment and sequence lighted parts of the static image, its low power consumption, and its beautiful l soft glow.

EL light in wire form is very flexible at any angle more easily to bend than its flat counterpart, although both are forms of EL light they are worlds apart in terms of applications they are used for. EL wire is a good alternative to EL panel strips although EL wire sizes are limited whereas EL strips can be ordered in any size and it’s easy to make a custom width if not already standard. Both EL wire and EL panel have their own unique advantages and unique applications that can be applied to each.

Newer development involves thermoforming EL light into custom shapes like rounded cell phone case but the imagination is limitless to how many unique applications for thermoforming el light can have.  Just like a regular molded plastic part it must be tooled first which as you know injection molding can be expensive so certainly this is not something for one of kind items it is used in mass production. The down side to thermoforming el panel is that it is much more expensive than a regular plastic injection mold; still many will find the cost insignificant since it is a onetime fee and can be used in production for years.

EL light is not typically as bright as led light, on average the standard EL light is about 70-85cd, higher grades up to 110cd, and super bright variations up to 200cd. The cost of the el panels and inverters increase as the brightness increase also. 99% of orders are made using standard grade EL light panel, our factory’s standard grade is comparable to many other factories’ highest grade, and overall our quality is superior to most due to the unique formula we have developed along with a quality production standard.

Custom Size EL Sheet

We can make a single EL sheet any dimension from 60cm wide to 180cm length, so 60x180cm is our max size el sheet. While it is still possible to make larger displays like billboard using multiple sheets.  Depending  on the size of the custom EL sheet a tooling cost will apply, we offer extremely low tooling cost making it very easy for you to order even small quantity of custom size el sheet. For an idea of the individual size tooling cost you can look at our standard sizes tooling cost for custom versions in the product descriptions in our shop for backlights like sizes A4-A1. If you provide the size outer dimensions we will be happy to quote as well.

If your EL sheet need a special shape there may also be a die cut tooling cost for punching the shape, if is small quantity we typically don’t recommend to make a die and just allowing us to hand cut but if you will doing many production of a panel we will require a die cut since it is labor restrictive to hand cut many thousands of El sheet to a custom shape also the quality will be improved with the die cut version.

We have already tooled many different sizes of EL sheet from very small to our max size 160x60cm, before request a custom size you might check our online catalogue to see the existing sizes available. The standard EL sheet can be used as a backlight or a decoration.  To use as a backlight simply apply a transparent jet print image layer over the EL panel or place it behind your transparent surface.

If using EL sheet as a backlight we recommend to order as pink/white that means pink when off white when on, this style of EL panel has the best white when on which insures that your image will remain true color when illuminated. If ordering as a decoration you can order in any of the standard colors or add an image layer of color or other pattern.

It is not recommended to simply cut the EL sheet of a larger size in order to get a custom smaller size. When we produce the el panel we consider a sealed edge, since any moisture can quickly damage an el panel it is important that the factory seal remain intact. Although it may be possible for a quick test or prototype for long lasting and quality production we recommend to tooling the custom size and shape that you may need.