Taiwan’s first Automotive Optic Design Center (AODC) has recently been inaugurated by the Automotive Research & Testing Center (ARTC) of Taiwan, with the aim of vertically integrating the island’s automotive-lighting industry. ARTC president Joe Huang (second from left) signed IAH and DLS technical-transfer and consulting agreements with private companies.

At this year’s Lightfair, some LED supplier are peddling their cutting-edge, LED lighting products resorted to trashing — literally — fluorescent and incandescent lamps in their sales pitches.   For instance, a transparent trash pail filled with standard and C.F.L. bulbs was set up at a booth belonging to Digital Light, and. A glowing, LED-powered light stood triumphantly above the refuse.   

Epistar Inc., the No.1 LED chipmaker in Taiwan, is reportedly to be acquiring Huga Optech Inc., the island`s second biggest LED provider, to ease its straining capacity, and is near the end of the acquisition.

A report on the state of the LED-based traffic light market in China has recently been published on Reports-research.com. The report indicates that the market for LED-based traffic lights in China still has significant room to grow in the future from demand in small and medium sized cities.

TT electronics Optek Technology has just announced its new multi-chromatic tuned light engines to provide lighting designers with highly consistent LED color matching capabilities. The company’s chromatic tuning process produces solid-state lighting solutions with high module-to-module consistency, such that differences in color temperature of each light engine are indistinguishable to the human eye.

Leviton Manufacturing Company, Inc., manufacturer of electrical and electronic wiring devices for OEM lighting fixture customers, and Molex Incorporated (NASDAQ: MOLX and MOLXA), supplier of interconnect products worldwide, have entered into a strategic alliance to deliver LED lighting solutions to manufacturers of commercial, industrial and residential lighting fixtures.

AIXTRON and Semileds has just announced their successful cooperated fabrication of GaN-based blue LED chips on 6-inch sapphire wafers. Not only were optical results encouraging but also the process is sufficiently close to production compatibility that the company should soon be able to reap the rewards from larger wafers.

The 20th annual LIGHTFAIR® International (LFI)Innovation Awards (LIA) ceremony took place before the opening of the 2009 LFI trade show on May 5. The industry’s most innovative products and designs introduced in the past 12 months were celebrated at the Awards. Each individual product among the 218 submissions LFI received this year was judged by an independent panel of renowned lighting professionals, and the winners are:

Nexxus Lighting, Inc. (NASDAQ:NEXS) and QD Vision, Inc. today unveiled the world's first quantum dot lighting solution that combines the efficiency of LED lighting with the warm color of incandescent bulbs. The new lamp integrates a quantum dot optic with cool white LEDs to produce color-rich, true incandescent, warm white light which can provide over 80% energy savings and lasts up to 25 times longer than comparable halogen lighting alternatives.

National Semiconductor Corp. and Nuventix, Inc. today unveiled a new electronic drive and thermal management reference design that simplifies development of high-brightness light-emitting diode (LED) bulb fixtures that replace incandescent or compact fluorescent light bulbs in standard sockets. The new LED electronic drive and thermal management reference design will be demonstrated in Nuventix's booth #3260 at the Lightfair International conference in New York from May 5 to 7.

Epistar Corp, Taiwan’s largest LED provider, is now in talks with Chinese lighting manufacturers and local governments about some investment projects said the comany.

For those who are interested in creative ideas and innovative technology concepts, the “LED – Emotionalize your light” idea contest to be started online this May will offer an exciting opportunity. Via an easy submission procedure, the participants can put their own light design online, and all the participants will have the chance to win valuable prizes amounting to 7000€.

Cree announces a prototype version of the LR6 LED recessed downlight that consumes just 6.5 W of electricity, resulting in 665 lumens, an efficacy of 102 lumens per watt and a power factor greater than 0.9.

Shown at LIGHTFAIR International in New York, the high-efficiency LR6 prototype features TrueWhiteTM technology, resulting in a 92 color rendering index and a 3500 K color temperature.

Luminus Devices, Inc., today announced the introduction of the SST-50 White PhlatLight® LED, the first 5.5W monolithic large-chip LED in a surface-mount (SMT) package. The SST-50 is designed to integrate directly with existing LED lay-outs and enable the next level of performance required by fixture designers to deliver LED-based solutions for mainstream applications in the general, architectural and portable lighting markets.

Zumtobel of Austria and Royal Philips Electronics of The Netherlands have signed a comprehensive, worldwide, cross licensing agreement, under which TridonicAtco and Ledon, the Zumtobel Group’s OEM brands, will become qualified suppliers under the Philips LED-based luminaires licensing program, which is a part of the agreement.

OSRAM Opto has released the new ultra-white Oslon SSL LED in a package measuring just 3 x 3 mm. The Oslon LED has a typical luminous efficacy value of 100 lm/W, and features simplified thermal management, high reliability and a beam angle of 80°. The Oslon LED is an LED in the 1 W class and meets the requirements for use in general lighting, like in spotlights, desk lights and ceiling floodlights.

Endicott Research Group (ERG), known for its expertise in powering CCFL and LED backlights for LCDs, is developing new LED driver solutions for the solid state lighting market. Leveraging technology developed for its CCFL inverters and LED backlight drivers, ERG will be introducing a family of Smart Force(TM) LED drivers that combine full-function power supplies with energy-efficient controllers for commercial, industrial, architectural and other SSL applications.

Lumitex, Inc. announces the establishment of its West Coast R&D Center in Irvine, California, and Asian manufacturing center in Taipei, Taiwan to help develop, apply and produce illumination solutions using patented LED and fiber optic technologies for electronics applications on the West Coast and in Asia.

Bridgelux, Inc., a U.S. lighting company and supplier of energy-saving light-emitting diode (LED) based light sources, announced yesterday that the company has launched a Lighting Services Group offering its customers a wide range of design and support services. As an increasing number of lamp and luminaire manufacturers transition to solid-state lighting, new system-level design opportunities arise.

At Lightfair International 2009, PerkinElmer, Inc. yesterday announced the introduction of its new LED fiber optic illuminator that exceeds the brightness levels of 150-watt halogen technology while using fifty percent less power.

Nuventix, Inc., innovator of SynJet® active thermal management solutions, announces the general availability of the SynJet Universal DLM cooler for the Philips Fortimo/Lexel LED Downlight Module. This Nuventix active cooling product is the most compact and low profile luminaire available in the market today.

The campus of Bosque School in southern Albuquerque, U.S., is soon to get a new appearance with clean technology. The school will replace its nearly 100 outdoor light poles with solar-powered LEDs that are controlled by smart technology to shut on and off automatically.

Base on NeoPac Universal Platform for solid state lighting, NeoPac built high brightness (4,400 lumen) , high CRI (~90) LEDs light module for stage spotlight application.

CIL (Custom Interconnect Limited), a  UK supplier of electronics manufacturing services to the European electronics industry, will display an extensive range of LED based designs on Stand LED46 at the euroLED 2009 to be held at the Ricoh Arena on June 3rd and 4th.  The company will also demonstrate its ability to provide bespoke packaging of both bare-die LEDs and the assembly of pre-packaged parts from manufacturers such as Lumileds, Cree and Osram.

The Luxeed multicolor keyboard released last year has got its new 2009 update now. The incredibly colorful keyboard is powered by 430 colored LEDs, which can all be sequenced using the included Windows software.

Samsung launched the first LED technology-based TV in India last Wednesday.

Cyberlux Corporation, a U.S.-based provider of LED lighting solutions, announced last week that it has begun production of fluorescent fixture replacement products delivering 31% improvement in energy per visible lumen and a performance life-time rating of 75,000 hours, which is ten times of the typical fluorescent tube performance of 7,500 hours. The Cyberlux ArcLight LED Lighting System products will address the large opportunities for high-efficiency replacement lighting products in the commercial, Federal, state and local government markets.

Cree, Inc. announces it is demonstrating the newest addition to its lighting-class XLamp® LED family—the XLamp XP-G LED—at LIGHTFAIR International in New York, May 5-7, 2009. The cool white XLamp XP-G provides 139 lumens and 132 lumens per Watt at 350 mA. Driven at 1 A, the XP-G produces 345 lumens, which is 37 percent brighter and 53 percent more efficient than the brightest XR-E LED. The XP-G LED has the highest lumen density of any available lighting-class LED, and it is based on the XLamp XP family package.

Macroblock announced its newly-developed 8-channel and 4-channel constant current LED drivers –MBI1828 and MBI1824, for the application of LCD monitor and high brightness LEDs. Since LED contains no mercury and provides highly directional light source, it is suitable for backlighting applications to provide high brightness. By high voltage process technology, MBI1828 and MBI1824 are designed to light up cascaded LEDs in single channel with high luminance.