A team of specialists from the MIT American university have designed an incandescent light bulb that is more energy efficient than LEDs, claims a study published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

The success is based on a technique of recycling the energy lost to heat emitted which consists of coating the filament with a crystal structure. This coating allows light to pass through, but retains energy that otherwise would be lost and redirects it to the filament, where it is used to create light.

LED devices, which become a commercial success after the introduction of production and trade restrictions on selling incandescent bulbs are not really preferred by many users because of the unnatural color. This new production technique could bring incandescent bulbs back to life.

The efficiency of traditional light bulbs is very low, around 95% of energy is lost as heat. In contrast, a LED has an efficiency of 14%. If is taken into account the new production technique, the MIT team believes that an incandescent bulb could achieve an efficiency of 40%.