Electro-luminescent strip and connector set therefor

Abstract

An electro-luminescent light strip (08) is constructed of two halves (8A,8B) separated by a gap or isolation layer, with one half consisting of, from top to bottom, a transparent conductive layer which forms the light emitting surface, a phosphor layer, an isolation layer, and a conductive layer, and the other half consisting of the same layers with the addition of a reflective layer between the isolation and conductive layers. Rather than providing electrical connection terminals on both the upper and lower conductive layers of the strip, electrical connection is established by contacting the any portion of the lowermost conductive layers (81,82) of the two halves (8A,8B) of the light strip. Contact can be made, for example, by positioning conductive rubber tubes (10,10') between conductive layers (81,82) and the stripped ends (12) of connecting wires (11) to establish an electrical connection upon attachment of a cover (07), which contains positioning slots (17,17') for the tubes and a positioning slot (08') for the light strip, to a base (06) which contains positioning slots (13,13') for the wires, the wires thereby being compressed against the tubes, and the tubes against the conductive layers. In addition, the strip can be extended by adding additional light strip portions similar to portions (8A,8B) separated by additional dielectric layers or gaps, and contact with the lowermost conductive layers of the additional portions of the strip can be established by adding additional slots (110) for the wires and additional slots (117) for the tubes. Also, instead of providing positioning slots for the wires in the base and positioning slots for the tubes in the cover, both the wires and the tubes can be positioned in slots in the base (107,207,307), and the strip can be pressed against the tubes and wires by a flat cover (306).

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.