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The technique is designed to overcome the prohibitive costs of current LED manufacture by building the diodes on low cost silicon wafers, instead of sapphire.
LEDs are claimed to be four times more efficient than conventional incandescent lights, more environmentally friendly than compact fluorescent lights, and can have a lifespan of up to 15 years.
Purdue University researchers who developed the technique, claim this new LED technology could cut electricity consumption by 10 per cent.
Incandescent bulbs convert only 10 per cent of electricity into light, and the rest into heat, but by comparison, LEDs are designed to emit white light operate at efficiencies ranging from 47 to 64 per cent, but at present cost some 20 times more than conventional incandescent and compact fluorescent light bulbs.
Currently LEDs built on sapphire comprise a light-emitting material called gallium nitride but this new technique uses silicon wafers that are coated in a reflective metallic layer of zirconium nitride.
