Working on my first patent

I've been charged with the design of some new optical systems based on geometry and varied materials to improve the brightness of light emitting devices. One of the great things about doing simulation work is that I can create 3D models, change materials and configurations faster than it would take the people fabricating the devices to create and test the devices built, because semiconductor fabrication is tough work.

Meaning that I can likely iterate through far more designs and variations than the processing people can go through in the same amount of time, probably by factor of x5 ~ x10 easy.

As a result of the work I am currently doing, I've been able to write a library that allows me to quickly generate 3D models, simulate them and analize the data faster than the guy that taught me to use the software (and has about 2 years up on me in experience using the simulation program). We tried to bring in another guy from a different department to do simulation work, but after 6 months of work, he eventually burned out... but I digress...

Now after getting out of the clean-room and having reasonable amounts of time to spend thinking and analyzing information, I have already found ways of increading output of our devices between 20%~50% with out standard models and I have identified a possible way of pushing that up to the 60%-90% range with some designs.While I am at it, I figured that it would be very cool to put out a patent to have something under my name.

Applying for patents is an expensive process with fees for the application and additional fees to maintain the patent over it's period. As an individual, it might be prohivitive to do this kind of stuff, but if you're working for a large corporation that can do this, why not?

Unfortunately, the patent review process takes approximately 3 years to go through, but I figured that the earlier I get started, the better. I just need to get it through the internal review process and find time to talk to the legal department here... this is going to be interesting.