A new semiconductor device capable of emitting two distinct colours has been created by a group of researchers in the US, potentially opening up the possibility of using LEDs universally for cheap and efficient lighting. The proof-of-concept device, which has been presented today, 3 May, in IOP Publishing's journal Semiconductor Science and Technology, takes advantage of the latest nano-scale materials and processes to emit green and red light separated by a wavelength of 97 nanometres—a significantly larger bandwidth than a traditional semiconductor. Furthermor...

Traditionally Gallium Nitride (GaN) LED devices are produced on either sapphire or silicon carbide (SiC) substrates, due to the good crystal lattice matching between the materials and the GaN, with typically 2” or 4” diameter material being used. Significant effort is being made to grow GaN on ubiquitous larger diameter (6” or greater) silicon wafers, a substrate that offers significant substrate cost reduction, together with the ability to process in automated IC production lines. Reasonable estimates are that potential savings on the order of 80% over tr...

Arkema has commercialised a grade of acrylic resin that is better suited to handle modern LED lighting. Arkema – based in Colombes, France, with U.S. headquarters in Philadelphia — began making Plexiglas Diffuse-brand resins in March at its plant in Bristol, Pa. Production of the materials at an Arkema plant in Rho, Italy, will begin in May. The material can diffuse light in LED applications without compromising overall light transmission, officials said. Typical applications for Diffuse-brand resins include architectural and indoor commercial lighti...

The student Ming Ma from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has developed a new method to manufacture LEDs that are brighter, more energy efficient, and have superior technical properties than those on the market today. His patent-pending invention holds the promise of hastening the global adoption of LEDs and reducing the overall cost and environmental impact of illuminating our homes and businesses. Seeking Brighter, Smarter LEDs Conventional incandescent and fluorescent light sources are increasingly being replaced by more energy-efficient, longer-lived, and envir...

Wichita Falls, Texas - The orange glow from street lights in downtown Wichita Falls will soon be a thing of the past. City councilors recently approved the purchase of nearly $200,000 worth of LED street lights. Crews installed one at 8th and Lamar to test it out and it received a glowing approval from city traffic officials. "It's a whiter, brighter light so it makes it easier to see. It's a very energy efficient light source so in most cases we will save 40 up to 60 percent, depending on how we set the lights up," says Mark Beauchamp, traffic superin...

Increased competition, steady cost reductions and improved technology performance are putting the LED lighting industry on a path to securing an 80 percent market share for lighting by 2020. In a briefing this morning hosted by Credit Suisse, lighting expert and former Philips Lighting CEO Ludo Carnotensis discussed the global competitive landscape for LED lighting and said that an "aggressive scenario" of 80 percent LED penetration is "in the cards." The industry's market share was just under 12 percent in 2012 and is expected to hit 25 percent...

 With its rich architectural heritage, Chicago takes skyscrapers seriously. So when a glassy, 40-story Helmut Jahn-designed tower built in 1980 underwent rebranding to attract new tenants, the end result had to be worthy of distinction. A revitalization of the building’s lobby and street-level exterior called for enhancing the artistic nature of the structure. In keeping with that intent, Plexineon White 2X Series fixtures were chosen to highlight two new entrance canopies, each situated along a different downtown street. Striped and streamlined, Plexineon provides an accent that’s consistent with the clean, contemporary lines of 55 W. Monroe St......

Dunkin’ Donuts’ Indonesia flagship store in Palembang, Indonesia, will be the first Southeast Asia franchise location to be lit entirely by LEDs. The store expects to save $21,000 in annual energy and maintenance costs using GE’s Tetra® LED signage lighting and GE LED display, general and ambient lighting instead of the halogen PAR lamps often used in these applications. "To attract and serve our customers, quality illumination that exudes an inviting ambience plays a critical role." said Tan Po Lian, franchise owner of Indon...

 Heliospectra, specialists in smart LED lighting systems for plant science and horticulture applications, has been chosen by the Institute of Space Systems, the Bremen site of the German Centre for Aerospace, DLR (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt), as supplier of lighting systems for an extensive research study.  This research initiative, EDEN (Evolution & Design of Environmentally-closed Nutrition sources), focuses on bioregenerative life support systems, especially greenhouse modules and technologies for future human habitats......

The national government provides financial support to manufacturers and consumers to help enhance the sector’s competitiveness. China continues to push its LED program to boost the energy conservation campaign while strengthening manufacturing technology and domestic lighting market share. The Ministry of Science and Technology and the State Council of China has released two detailed subsidy policies. The guidelines take off from the 12th Five-Year specialized and development plans respectively for the semiconductor illumination and the energy-saving and environmenta...

For astronomers, a well-lit city means a sky unavailable for study. Worse, light pollution is blamed for affecting bird migration, sea turtle hatching, and wildlife mating and feeding routines. Researchers at National Central University, Taiwan, and Unidad Academica de Fisica, Universidad Autonoma de Zacatecas, Mexico, have attacked the problem with a new LED street lamp designed to shine only where needed, without splashing into unwanted areas, as a way to reduce light pollution while providing better lighting. Current street lights often use high-pressure sodium or merc...

Supertex, Inc. introduced HV9910C, an open loop, current mode, universal high brightness LED driver IC. It is ideal for general and decorative LED lighting, flat panel display backlighting, and other DC/DC or AC/DC input based applications. HV9910C is an enhanced drop-in replacement to the HV9910B, designed to convert high voltage supplies (85V - 265VAC rectified) or (15V - 450VDC) to a constant current source for powering a string or a combination of strings of high brightness LEDs. It can be programmed to operate in either a constant frequency or c...

the slim-line trailer lamp with a Built-in triangle reflector The lamps will be available in May to fit trailers of all sizes, and the debut coincides with a five-year warranty and compatibility offering with LED Autolamps' new, easy wiring harness systems. The lamp's embedded electronic circuit board ensures the light clusters are sealed against water and dust ingress, with a rating to IP67. With ECE approval and RoHS compliance, the units are made from shock-resistant plastics for demanding environments. The lighting system incorporates LED Autolamps&...

NXP Semiconductors N.V. introduced 15 new reference design boards featuring NXP’s broad portfolio of mains-dimmable and non-dimmable solid-state lighting (SSL) driver ICs. Each reference board is built around a best-in-class GreenChip™ LED driver IC, and has been designed to minimize the total EBOM (engineering bill of materials) cost while maintaining expected performance requirements for specific lighting applications. NXP’s cost-effective LED driver solutions simplify lamp design with the right form factor to streamline the design-in pr...

Following the December 2012 launch of the Works with Soraa program, the lighting industry’s first lamp and fixture validation program, Soraa announced the addition of nine new fixture manufacturers. The companies Excelsior Lighting, HK Lighting Group, Light Raze, Tegan Lighting, Intense Lighting, Lucifer Lighting, Nora Lighting, Liton Lighting, and Pure Edge Lighting join the four original partners—Tech Lighting, Focal Point, Hevi Lite, and Dreamscape Lighting—to form the largest coalition building validated LED lamp and fixture solutio...

Hitachi Cable has launched a new mass-production technology for GaN-templates as shown in  Figures 1 and 2 below. The process allows high-quality GaN single-crystal thin film to be grown on a sapphire substrate and the company plans to start selling these templates. Using this product as a base substrate for an epitaxial wafer for white LEDs the company claims it makes it possible to drastically improve productivity of white LED epiwafers and the LED properties. Therefore, this product is expected to become an effective solution to improve the position of...

AT THE JUST concluded Lightfair International (LFI) 2013 trade show at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, the operative word was "BRIGHT."   "We're in a lumens [brightness level] race," several exhibitors explained. All to prove that their new-generation fixtures - most fired up by a mess of small, energy-efficient LEDs - put out a glow that beats older products using incandescent, halogen or flourescent bulbs.   There's also a big push on by LED lightbulb makers to make their new-gen bulbs glow like warm incandes...

From electric lamps to LED technology, Gotham continues its tradition as a leader in architectural downlighting.  For 75 years, Gotham has thrived as one of the most respected names in architectural lighting. In 1938, Harry Gerstel, a devotee of well-known architect and lighting pioneer Richard Kelly, founded Gotham® architectural downlighting in New York City. Since its beginning, Gotham heritage has made a commitment to product leadership and breakthroughs in downlighting. Today, the company continues to enhance its product leadership with the latest inno...

NanoPoint™ enables fast, practical design qualification and highly sensitive process monitoring by leveraging critical patterns KLA-Tencor Corporation (NASDAQ: KLAC) announced NanoPoint™, a new family of patented technologies for its 2900 Series defect inspection system. NanoPoint represents an entirely new way to discover and monitor defects, at optical speed and on existing optical defect inspection equipment. NanoPoint's value has already been demonstrated on early metal layers, where line-edge roughness (LER) on dense pattern had previously l...

Kim Lighting, a Hubbell Lighting brand, announced the LightVault 8 in-grade outdoor solid-state lighting (SSL) fixture at Lightfair International (LFI) 2013, with an integrated Bluetooth wireless network for commissioning. Kurt Versen's MultiSource downlights won an Innovation award in part due to the family's flexible support of LED and legacy sources. And Hubbell Building Automation won a controls-oriented award for its WASP2 outdoor occupancy sensor. The Kim Lighting LED-based LightVault 8 products are due to market in May. The company wi...

Third quarter 2012, Aeon Lighting Technology Inc. (ALT) has submitted the ALTLED® A55 LED light bulb, with a 360° omnidirectional lighting, for Energy Star certification—approved in January 2013. For many consumers and clients, this has opened up many opportunities for them as well as ALT. ENERGY STAR is a joint program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy" designed to promote energy efficient products and practices through financial incentives and high standards. One of the reasons...

American donut franchise Dunkin’ Donuts’ flagship store in Indonesia will lead the way in green lighting by being the first of its franchise outlets in Southeast Asia to employ a complete LED solution. The Palembang store is the 300th outlet, and the largest, for Dunkin’ Donuts in the country,with aseating capacity of 200 and serving a continuous stream of customers daily. In creating an inviting ambience, the GE team will fit out369 light points at the store with an energy-efficientretail solution comprising its LED Tetra Series andLED lamps. Do...

Acuity Brands unveiled a new LED lighting system concept during LIGHTFAIR International 2013 in Philadelphia. Acuity Brands also announced expanded access to its eldoLED Driver portfolio. The Aera system uses wall-recessed LED luminaires to offer a combination of indirect ambient illumination and luminous presentations that can be customized for the occupant and the space. The company says that the trim-less wall integration and daylight appearance of the lighting system add to its appeal. The Aera LED luminaire system features a discreetly hidden white light...

A Market research company says that the decline in the price of LED light sources helped to trigger growth in the market. According to the company revenues grew from $7.3 billion in 2011 to $9.4 billion in 2012, a growth of 28%. The company forecasts that the CAGR for revenues for LED Luminaires in all applications for 2012-2016 is 18%. By 2012, LED luminaires had penetrated variety of applications. The Market research company says that large scale adoption of downlighting in commercial applications drove revenues up 76% between 2011 and 2012. The Japanese commercial...

MetLife, Inc. recently took out an energy savings policy with GE Lighting (NYSE: GE)—upgrading to Evolve™ LED outdoor lighting in parking lots at 10 office locations and switching to more energy-efficient T8 fluorescent indoor lighting at its 650,000-square-foot administrative center in St. Louis. Combined, these lighting solutions will save MetLife approximately $360,000 a year while consuming about 3.5 million fewer kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity. MetLife is a leading global provider of insurance, annuities and employee benefit programs serving ...

GE Lighting has entered a joint-development agreement with Cooledge Lighting Inc. to develop a customized GE Lightech LED power-supply driver as a key component in Cooledge's first full range of LED light sheet solutions for fixture companies, which debut this week at the LightFair International trade show in Philadelphia. GE Lighting's JDA with Cooledge extends beyond the LED driver integration to include the development of high performance LED phosphors and LED solutions targeting a wide range of commercial applications including signage and re...

It's taken a while for the humble LED to gain a foothold in the broader consumer market—blame artisanal culture or simple force of habit, people love their cream-colored incandescent bulbs. But as the New York Times devoted 1600 words to explaining yesterday, more and more designers are jumping on the LED bandwagon. Case in point: the CMYK Bulb by the Dutch lighting designer Dennis Parren. Parren's pendant lamp is business on the bottom, party up top: a normal white LED points downwards, while a set of upward-facing LEDs cast CMYK-hued light ...

At LIGHTFAIR International 2013, Thermal Solution Resources, LLC (TSR) introduced the world’s smallest wireless LED lamp – the intelliSSL™ MR16 which can be controlled remotely from iOS, Android or Windows smartphones, tablets or PCs. The intelliSSL lamp incorporates an ultra-compact driver architecture with a powerful antenna system, designed to maximize reception strength, and uses the ultra-low-power JN5168 wireless microcontroller from NXP Semiconductors N.V. The patent-pending intelliSSL design provides strong wire...

Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) introduced three new DC/DC LED drivers that simplify white color tuning for high-color rendering and ultra-low dimming in professional-grade indoor and outdoor LED lighting applications. The TPS92660 two-string LED driver and TPS92640/1 synchronous buck controllers address the challenges of precise color and brightness control lighting that designers face in creating high quality light engines for commercial area lighting, including architectural and retail displays, as well as LED-based projection systems and automotive running...

Following its entry into the LED retrofit market in 2012 with a line of dual-stage LED drivers, Cirrus Logic, Inc. has introduced its first family of single-stage LED drivers, the CS1615/16, targeting the incandescent lamp replacement market. Through patented technology, the CS1615/16 consistently outperforms competing single-stage LED drivers in dimmer compatibility while offering a total bill-of-material cost equal to competing solutions. Across a broad range of dimmers, the CS1615/16 consistently dims to nearly zero light output, which closely matches the dimming...