Philips Electronics North America Corporation

Koninklijke Philips Corporation N.v.

Jose Azevedo

Gert W Bruning

Vivek Mehrotra

Susan McGee

Ronald M Wolf

Juan A Sabate

Hui-Meng Chow

Sridhar Sundaram

Shri Sridhar

A tubular fluorescent lamp has a light emissive portion and an integral adjacent portion for containing power circuitry, such as an electronic ballast for providing high voltage power to electrodes of the lamp. All necessary electrical connections between the power circuitry and the electrodes are provided either within or on the lamp structure itself.

Fluorescent lamp with integral circuitry

A compact circuit assembly is provided for containment within the end of a circular fluorescent lamp envelope. The circuit assembly includes a plurality of circular circuit boards arranged along the length of the envelope end and having respective peripheries contacting an inner surface of the envelope. The circuit boards are interconnected and held in spaced-apart positions by a plurality of longitudinally-extending conductors which also serve as electrical buses for making electrical connections.

Circuit assembly for inclusion within fluorescent lamp

A high-leakage planar magnetic component such as an inductor, having a winding structure in which flat winding turns are oriented transverse to the plane of the winding structure, exhibits significantly lower winding losses than components having a stacked arrangement of flat winding turns parallel to the plane of the winding structure. A dense winding structure having such a transverse orientation can readily be made by forming a flat conductor into a coil using conventional wire winding techniques.

Planar magnetic component with transverse winding pattern

Anodized aluminum anode and cathode foils are interleaved in a stack separated by spacers saturated with electrolyte in an enclosure. The anode foils and cathode foils have tabs which protrude from the housing and are cold welded to leads outside the housing, where they are not exposed to electrolyte. This permits using copper leads, which can be soldered to traces on a printed circuit board. A flat capacitor can be fixed underneath a PCB or even used as the substrate for a circuit, resulting in high volume efficiencies and the possibility of using it as a heat sink for other components.

Flat electrolytic capacitor

An electric gas discharge lamp includes an electrode having a tip portion comprised by a mesh body carrying an emitter material. The mesh body in a favorable embodiment is circular cylindrical and is attached via an electrically conductive thermal isolator to a conductive feed-through, such as a hollow ferrule, extending through a seal of the lamp vessel. As compared to a continuous walled tip portion of similar shape and material, the mesh body has a lower mass and heat capacity, and can therefore be operated at higher temperatures without increasing the temperature of the seal area. The higher operating temperature of the tip portion promotes greater electron emission from the emitter material, and therefore a lower cathode fall. A lower cathode fall enables the lamp to be operated at higher lamp currents for greater light output. The mesh body also has the capability to reduce sputtering from the electrode through improved adhesion of the emitter material to the tip portion and faster attainment of its nominal operating temperature as compared to a smooth continuous walled body. In a favorable embodiment, the lamp is a low pressure discharge lamp having an inside diameter of less than about 5 mm.

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Mahopac, NY, United States of America

Jose Azevedo