TowerJazz, an Israel-based chip producer, announced that its 0.18um CMOS Image Sensor (CIS) SPAD (single-photon avalanche diode) process has been selected by LeddarTech, a Canadian automotive LiDAR developer, for its automotive LiDAR solutions. TowerJazz’s CIS SPAD platform combines CMOS, image sensors and SPAD on the same chip, offering an integrated solution with figures of merit. Through the partnership with TowerJazz, LeddarTech expects to expand the market of its LiDAR platform. LeddarTech’s LiDAR solutions enable...

Forest Lighting has released a letter to its customers to share the update regarding MLS’s plan to integrate Forest Lighting and LEDVANCE. MLS is the global parent company of LEDVANCE and Forest Lighting and has decided to integrate these two businesses in the United States and Canada to maximize operation efficiency. According to the announcement of Forest Lighting, LEDVANCE will be responsible for operation management after integration. The purpose of the integration is to accelerate product development, reduce internal costs, and improve...

Kulicke and Soffa (K&S) has announced its financial results of the fourth quarter and its fiscal 2018 ended September 29, 2018. The Company’s revenue for the fourth quarter was US$184.8 million and the full year revenue was US$889.1 million. Dr. Fusen Chen, Kulicke & Soffa's President and CEO, stated, “Over the past two years, our organizational redesign and development efforts have diversified our business and provided access to several new and promising growth opportunities. Throughout fiscal year 2018, these fundamental improvements resul...

FitTech, a Taiwanese LED chip and wafer probers provider, has increased its product portfolio for the production of Mini LED and VCSEL and has been providing its equipment to the top three Chinese LED companies. FitTech has continued to extend its product lines in the optoelectronic field with a focus on system integration. Its products include LED/wafer probers, automatic solar sorters, laser micromachining systems and others. With its products, the company has successfully become a supplier for the top three Chinese LED companies. Its LED prober takes...

Heliospectra, the Swedish horticulture LED lighting solution provider, has reported new orders from John Innes Center, a British research center, and F&M 2017 DOO, a Macedonian medicinal cannabis provider. UK-based John Innes Centre focuses on researches on plant science and uses speed breading to accelerate research on wheat and other crops. The institute has installed Heliospectra’s LED grow light for its research project and successfully speeded up the growing cycle of wheat. John Innes Centre has ordered new ELIXIA and EOS lights from H...

Electronica 2018, the biannual electronic components exhibition, was held in Munich, Germany, from November 13th to 16th. Several world leading LED producers joined the event to showcase their novel technology developments and innovative applications. Korea-based LG Innotek and Everlight from Taiwan both participated in Electronica 2018 and demonstrated their LED products and applications. LG Innotek presented its automotive and electronic components for electric and smart vehicles during the event and aims to increase its presence in the European market. The compan...

A new study published in the European Journal of Preventative Cardiology reported that exposure to blue light would decrease blood pressure and reduce the risk of developing cardiovascular disease. In previous studies, it is shown that UV light can help the skin to release nitric oxide and decrease blood pressure. Researchers from the University of Surrey and Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf have collaborated with Philips to learn whether body exposure to blue light also has the same effect as visible blue light is not carcinogenic compared to UV light. (Image: ...

Imec, the Belgium-based nanoelectronics research center, has worked with Ghent University and contact lens producer SEED to develop a contact lens integrated with LED light. The lens is presented at imec technology forum Japan (ITF Japan 2018) on November 19th, 2018. The contact lens with an integrated LED light is made of hydrogel-based material and is embedded with an ultra-thin silicon microchip, radio‐frequency (RF) antenna for wireless energy transfer, and stretchable thin‐film interconnections. imec and CMST, an imec research group at Ghent University...

SemiLEDs Corporation, a developer and manufacturer of LED chips and LED components, has posted its financial results for the fourth quarter and full year of fiscal year 2018, ended August 31, 2018. (Image: SemiLEDs) Revenues for the fourth quarter and for the third quarter of fiscal 2018 were both approximately US$2.0 million. GAAP net loss attributable to SemiLEDs stockholders for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2018 was US$1.1 million, compared to a loss of $326 thousand in the third quarter of 2018, or a net loss of US$0.32 per diluted share, compared to...

Orion Energy Systems reported results for the second quarter of its fiscal 2019 ended September 30, 2018. The company posted a revenue of US$ 13.2 million for 2Q19, down14.3% YoY and 4% QoQ due to lower sales through the distribution channel and delays of certain projects. Gross margin declined to 19.3% in 2Q19, compared to 23.5% in 2Q18. According to Orion, the business in the U.S. is progressing significantly with its automotive, retail and public sector customers. With its capability to provide tailored LED lighting solutions, the growth momentum of Orion com...

Big lighting brands have continually transformed their positioning from luminaires providers to high technology developers. Apart from Osram revising its organization structure and moving towards to digitalization, Signify has also been expanding its presence in the market of smart applications and establishing IoT systems in Asia. (Image: Signify) According to the report by Digital News Asia, Signify has launched its Interact IoT platform in Kuala Lumpur on November 14th. Alok Ghose, CEO of Signify ASEAN, said that the company will assist Malaysia for t...

Serving as a key technology in the development of autonomous vehicle, LiDAR has gained increasing attentions from the industry with more and more companies continually advancing their LiDAR technology development. Two LiDAR companies, Innoviz and Robosense, announced that their cutting-edge LiDAR solutions have been honored with CES 2019 Innovation Awards. Chinese LiDAR company RoboSense said that its RS-IPLS Intelligent Perception LiDAR System was named as a CES 2019 Innovation Awards Honoree which was released during CES Unveiled N...

With the help of Current, powered by GE, the City of San Diego has begun smart city project since last year and has released several new digital applications to improve parking, traffic and public safety on city streets. The city has continued to increase the installation of Current’s CityIQ sensor nodes on LED streetlights in the city. In total, the infrastructure project will include 4,200 new CityIQ nodes across 14,000 new individually metered LED fixtures. Together with a lighting control platform, the project will boost LED streetlight efficiency by an...

U.S.-based material producer PPG and wireless power company Powercast have announced a joint development agreement to produce wirelessly powered printed electronics products for applications such as smart consumer packaging and smart ID cards. By leveraging the expertise from each other, the project will combine substrate and conductive inks from PPG and receiver technology of Powercast to develop LED-based wireless illumination solutions. With the technology, consumer packaging can light up itself to showcase products on a shelf. For smart ID cards, it can be illumina...

Engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, have developed a flexible sensor embedded with red and infrared OLED which is able to map blood-oxygen levels over large areas of skin, tissue and organs. By tracking blood-oxygen, the OLED sensor could help to monitor healing wounds.

Optoelectronic component producer II-VI Inc. announced on November 9th that it is going to acquire Finisar, the supplier of optical communication products for Apple with a deal worth US$3.2 billion cash and stock.

Apple has reportedly been granted a patent related to Micro LED display which provides an angle-of-view adjustment layer that involves holographic technology, according to an article by Patently Apple. The patent application, titled “Display with Holographic Angle-of-View Adjustment Structure” describes that by adding an angle-of-view adjustment layer on the array of display pixels, the viewing angle for users is enriched. The angle-of-viewing adjustment layer may be formed from holographic structure. (Image: the United States Patent and Trademark Offi...

The American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) has released the second in a three-part series of standards which addresses LED radiation measurements for plant growth and development. (Image: ASABE) ASABE is a standards developing organization dedicated to advancing applicable engineering methods for agriculture, food and biological systems. The standard, ANSI/ASABE S642, titled “Recommended Methods for Measurement and Testing of LED Products for Plant Growth and Development,” describes the methods used f...

As the peak season has passed, Taiwanese Panel producer AUO has reported a revenue drop for October. Meanwhile there are rumors saying that the Foxconn Group plans to divide and restructure its panel business. AU Optronics (AUO) posted its consolidated revenue of NT$ 26.49 billion (US$ 861.59 million) for October which dropped by 3.4% MoM and 3.4% YoY. For the third quarter of 2018, the revenue was NT$81.04 billion (US$ 2.64 billion), up by 8% QoQ. According to AUO, the amount of shipment for large size panels including TVs, monitors and notebook...

With the drives from autonomous car development, LiDAR technology has been under the spotlight. Startups which focus on the technology have also gained attentions from the related industry and continued to unveil their development and updates about the technology. Luminar, a LiDAR startup that aim to increase the accessibility of the technology, has recruited Brent Schwarz, a veteran in the LiDAR sensor industry who has experiences at Velodyne and established his own company, Tyto LiDAR. As his LiDAR startup was acquired by Otto, which was then bought by Uber...

Pioneer and MooVita, an A*STAR spinoff company focusing on autonomous vehicle, are going to initiate a trial run of an autonomous shuttle bus equipped with Pioneer’s 3D-LiDAR sensor within the campus of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. The two companies expect to commercialize the service of the level four autonomous driving with the testing.

Osram has announced the financial results of fiscal 2018 and the fourth quarter of fiscal 2018 and addressed that it will focus on digitalization and high-growth markets.

General Electric (GE) has begun organization restructure and unveiled the intention to sell its lighting business since a year ago. In July 2018, the company has scheduled the selling plan to be in the end of the year. Finally, GE announced on November 6th that it has signed a proposed agreement to sell its Current, powered by GE business to American Industrial Partner (AIP)

Porta Nova, a rose grower based in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, is expanding its Philips GreenPower LED toplighting to trail a dedicated rose spectrum which will increase light levels year-round without increasing heat. The company decided to expand its invest of the lighting coverage to 5,000 square meters.

UV LEDs are widely applied in medical equipment and household products for sterilization. A Danish research team has further found that by combining treatment with UV irradiation, it helps to increase the effect of bacteria eradication of antibiotics. The light assisted approach can therefore reduce the usage amount of antibiotics. (Image: Pixabay) The overuse of antibiotics could result in bacterial resistance and in the worst case lead to incurable diseases. In order to prevent this situation, researchers are trying to find alternative treatments to reduce the use of an...

The fourth quarter is usually the low season in the LED industry. As business growth slows down, LED producer Epistar has announced plans to restructure the company to efficiently manage resources for reducing operation cost. Meanwhile, Lextar has speeded up the process of product development for new applications. Epistar has announced the merger of four of its subsidiaries including Epistar JV Holding (BVI), UEC Investment, HUGA Holding (BVI) and Bee Rich Corporation. The goal of the merge is to productively distribute the resources of the company and r...

Researchers in the industry and in the academic field have dedicated their efforts to overcome the difficulties of Micro LED display technologies. Currently the bottlenecks of the technology lie in six major areas including mass transferring process, the production of epitaxial wafer, method for full-color display, driver IC design, backplanes and testing and repair technology. One of the articles awarded with honorable mention in the Micro LED Technology Research Contest hosted by LEDinside has focused on the method for full-color display. The article, titled “Q...

The 2018 World Flora Exposition opened on November 3rd in Taichung, Taiwan. Signify has provided its lighting service to the pavilion of the Netherlands and helped to build the main installation art of the exposition. The company has also worked with the city of Taichung to set up LED streetlights with smart systems. 

Finnish autonomous vehicle developer Sensible 4 announced its partnership with Japanese retail brand MUJI to develop an autonomous shuttle bus which is able to work under any weather condition. Sensible 4 will provide its expertise in autonomous driving technology for functions of the bus such as positioning, navigation and obstacle detection, while MUJI will be in charge of user experience and the look of the vehicle. (Image: Sensible 4) The autonomous shuttle bus, named Gacha, will be showcased in Helsinki in March 2019 and start operating in three Finnish cities t...

On October 30th, a patent was granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to Apple for its “Exterior Lighting and Warning System” which uses a lighting system to indicate warnings and information from the outside of a car, reported Appleinsider.