People are getting more aware of how natural lighting affects the body as well as the psychological feelings. Lighting design and LED technology also address how the artificial light source can mimic the light in the nature. But how do we measure the “naturalness” of light? Bridgelux introduced a new metric to quantify the naturalness. Bridgelux announced that it has developed a new metric to enable objective comparison of light sources to natural light, since standard lighting quality metrics such as CRI and TM-30 do not fully address the naturalness. The LED...

Apple has sparked considerable discussions in the market after rumors surfaced that the company’s new 12.9-inch iPad Pro, to be released in 2021, may be equipped with Mini LED backlight technology. According to the newest investigations by the LEDinside research division of TrendForce, the manufacturing cost of Mini LED backlight displays is currently higher than that of traditional LCD and OLED displays. However, as manufacturers continue to make improvements in process technology and yield rate, the cost of Mini LED backlight displays is expected to under...

Some LEDs made from perovskite emit light over a broad wavelength range. To further explain the feature, scientists from the University of Groningen inspected some cases and proposed new explanation which may help other scientists to design perovskite LEDs capable of broad-range light emission. The study was published in the journal Nature Communications on May 11, 2020. Low-dimensional (2D or 1D) perovskites emit light in a narrow spectral range and are therefore used to make LED of superior color purity. However, in some cases, a broad emission spectrum at energy le...

Fluence by OSRAM announced its partnership with Compassionate Cultivation, a medical cannabis provider in Texas, USA. The two companies will collaborate on research studies using Fluence’s LED lighting systems to gather new insights into sustainable cannabis production. Compassionate Cultivation aims to ensure secure supply of high quality medical cannabis and teams up with Fluence to explore potential lighting strategies for optimizing cannabis growth. (Image: Fluence by Osram) Together, Fluence and Compassionate Cultivation will produce and publish...

Apple was reported last week that it has planned to invest US$334 million for the new facility in Taiwan, located in the Longtan section of Hsinchu Science Park. The new factory is believed to focus on Micro LED and Mini LED technologies which Apple aims to apply in its new products. Taiwanese companies Epistar and AUO as well as other companies of the Mini LED and Micro LED supplier chains are reportedly supporting Apple’s products adopting the next-gen display technologies. Apart from getting closer with its partners, another major reason for Ap...

Massive waves are crashing in the “Times Square” of Seoul, on the immense LED video wall wrapping around the SMTown Coex Artium building in South Korea. The huge wave content is created by d’strict, a digital technology company based in South Korea, bringing a vivid wave image into the Seoul city center. (Image: Screenshot from d'strict video clip) The curved LED screen measures 80.0 meter in width and 20.1 meters in height, which is four times the size of a basketball court in Seoul, according to a report covered by The Korea Herald. S...

The COVID-19 outbreak has spurred people’s awareness in disinfection and roused demands for related products and applications. UVC LEDs with germicidal function thus become popular among consumers and brands of home appliance. LG Electronics launched a new refrigerator with ice and water purifier using UVC LED technology. A UVC LED is equipped at the outlet of the water purifier of the refrigerator and is able to diminish 99.99% E. coli and Staphylococcus aureus based on the Korea Construction & Living Environment Research Institute (KCL) t...

Seoul Semiconductor has filed a patent infringement lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey against an automotive component distributer Onyx Enterprise International. According to Seoul Semiconductor, Onyx distributes various automotive LED lights on its online platform “CARiD.com,” which offers car parts and accessories covering automotive headlamps, tail lights and fog lights. The Korean company claimed that automotive LED products being sold on “CARiD.com” infringe 12 patents – including...

Signify launched its new lighting product based on the concept of Human Centric Lighting, NatureConnect, which is built on proven biophilic design principles, usint elements of nature in interior spaces to create healthy, engaging and inspiring environments.   (Image: Signify) It is suggested from several researches that exposure to the right amount of light during the day, as well as the colors and dynamics from nature helps to improve people’s physical and psychological wellbeing. But the modern life style often leads to lack access to enough daylight, resulting...

LG is joining the business of LED cinema screen to compete against its rival Samsung, reported by Aju News, a Korea-based media. It was reported in April that LG has registered a trademark for LG LED Cinema on March 31, 2020, to prepare for related business. Under the trademark, LEG plans to release LED signage for theaters. LG reported planned to release its cinema LED products at CinemaCon 2020 in Las Vegas, USA, but the event has been cancelled due to COVID-19. Nevertheless, as a proactively player in the display industry, LG has already i...

Canadian LiDAR technology developer LeddarTech has been working with its investor Osram on the LiDAR platform “PERCEPT.” Osram said that it is developing the first flexible solid state LiDAR focusing on mid to long range sensing and targeting the automotive mass market. (Image: Osram) The PERCEPT LiDAR will comprise Osram’s laser emitters and LeddarTech’s processing software. With these featured components, Osram aims to develop a LiDAR with the measuring approach of ToF. The LiDAR platform will serve long- a...

Researchers at the lab of Tobias Kippenberg at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne found a new way to implement a parallel FMCW LiDAR engine by using integrated nonlinear photonic circuitry. They coupled a single FMCW laser into a silicon-nitride planar microresonator, where the continuous wave laser light is converted into a stable optical pulse train due to the double balance of dispersion, nonlinearity, cavity pumping and loss. The study has been published in Nature. Coherent laser ranging, also known as frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW) LiDA...

U.S.-based LED lighting company Energy Focus announced its 1Q20 financial resulted and posted a 19.1% YoY revenue growth despite the economic headwinds resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic. In 1Q20, the net sales of Energy Focus came to US$3.8 million, increased by 19% YoY compared to US$3.2 million in 1Q19. Commercial products accounted for 45.9% of the revenue and 54.1% of its sales came from military and maritime products, increased from 37.6% in the first quarter of 2019. Gross profit was US$1 million with a gross margin of 27.3%, which increased by 24.2...

LiDAR technology has a wide range of applications, from autonomous driving, industrial automation, to the latest people flow control and social distance maintaining. And now, a group of scientists uses the technology to monitor activity of mosquito. An international research team published a study on Science Advances demonstrating its approach to use LiDAR technology to remotely monitor mosquito activity. Through LiDAR technology, they found the “rush hour” of mosquito in a southeastern Tanzanian village and by identifying the most active time of mosquito, it...

SANANBIO, the joint venture of Sanan Optoelectronics and Chinese Academy of Science, announced that it will work on an indoor farming project in Qatar with its strategy partner Hode Agtech, an agri-tech company based in Guangdong, China. The two Chinese companies signed an agreement to develop vertical farming in Qatar to push agriculture transformation and restructure local agriculture supply chain. (Image: SANANBIO) Located in desert, Qatar is highly depending on food import especially for fresh vegetables. 90% of the vegetable consumed in Qatar co...

COVID-19 pandemic has led to lockdowns across the world with pause in business operation and production, resulting enormous impact globally. The technology industry, as one of the most affected field, not only needs to tackle the challenges brought by the coronavirus but also has to reconsider its strategies and operating plans for the post-pandemic world. As for the LED industry, since the supply chain mostly locates in Asia with the majority of production coming from China, plus high inventory due to oversupply in the past few years, the coronavirus epidemic has relatively s...

Canada-based Elevate Farms announced its agreement with North Star Agriculture for an initial build-out commitment of US$ 10 million to bring vertical farming and ‎‎‎production of leafy green vegetables, to northern Canada including Yukon and other isolated northern territories. Elevate and North Star have agreed to develop and construct a series of automated large-scale facilities (CEF Facilities) dedicated to the mass ‎production of leafy green plants implementing, among other techniques, the use of patented ‎LED lighting, moving grow ‎boxes a...

Recently it is reported that Apple is planning to invest around US$ 334 million for its new facility in Taiwan to push development in Micro LED and Mini LED display technology with its local partners Epistar and AUO. Many believe that the iPhone maker will intensify its display technologies including Mini LED and Micro LED with the mature LED supply chain in Taiwan covering wafer manufacture, chip production, chip testing and display fabrication. LEDinside covered in November 2019 that Apple has almost finished the construction of the new facility in ...

Advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and technologies previously designed for mobile devices, such as facial recognition, eye tracking or gesture control, are increasingly making their way into the automotive sector. These technologies are based on infrared light. The smaller and more powerful the required components, the easier they are to integrate into complex designs. Osram’s Oslon Piccolo now offers an extremely compact infrared LED (IRED) that packs enormous power in a small package, making it ideal for customers. (Image: Osram) Autonomous driving w...

LeddarTech, the LiDAR technology supplier from Canada, announced its volume production plan of the LeddarTM Pixell LiDAR Module with Clarion Malaysia, a member of Faurecia Clarion Electronics. (Image: LeddarTech) The Leddar Pixell is based on 3D solid-state flash LiDAR to reach a field-of-view of 180-degree designed and tested for off-road, shuttles, robotaxis, delivery, commercial and heavy industry vehicles in addition to other robotic and automated applications. The Canadian company has proactively strengthened its partnerships with automotive co...

Taiwan-based LED manufacturer Everlight began shipping its first batch of Mini LED products in 2H19. While the company steadily expands shipment this year, mostly on the strength of its Mini LED TV backlights, it is also expected to include automotive display panels in its portfolio next year. The overall market sentiment is optimistic regarding Everlight’s future operations, driven by the forward momentum of Mini LED products. (Image: LEDinside) Comparing to OLED-based products, Everlight’s Mini LED products are highly cost-competitive ...

STMicroelectronics announced that it has become an Associate member of the Zhaga Consortium to advance the deployment of NFC technology in the industrial lighting market. The Zhaga Consortium is a global industry organization that aims to standardize interfaces of LED luminaires. ST’s membership to the Zhaga Consortium sets to facilitate the integration of NFC in lighting products and accelerate the emergence of new standards. One of the key benefits of NFC technology is the ability to improve flexibility and efficiency of LED-driver manufacturing lines....

U.S.-based LiDAR technology developer Velodyn Lidar recently announced its partnership with two 3D mapping technology solutions providers. Velodyne and GeoSLAM, a UK-based 3D geospatial technology supplier, signed a multi-year sales agreement to use LiDAR sensors in the mobile scanner for 3D mapping. LiDAR sensors from Velodyne enable GeoSLAM systems to achieve data capture of intricate measurements from up to 100 meters away. The mobile scanner can be wide applied for building information modeling (BIM), construction, real estate, surveying and mining...

The Customs Tariff Commission of the State Council of China announced the second list of American goods to be excluded from the second round of tariffs countermeasures against the US Section 301 measure. UV lamps and IR lamps are listed in the tariff-free goods. (Image: Pixabay) China published the list of 79 items that will be exempt from extra Chinese tariffs and the exclusion will become effective from May 19, 2020, for one year until May 18, 2021. The already imposed tariff will be refunded with application within six months since May 19. The list includes m...

According to the research of LEDinside, the global LED horticultural lighting market saw a growth of 25% to 30% to US$ 369 million in 2019, with an increase of 31% year-on-year. Currently, LEDinside was fortunate to have an exclusive interview with OSRAM, a global leader in LED horticultural lighting, to learn how the future development of the horticultural lighting market is and how OSRAM’s LED technology supports various horticultural lighting applications. Chi Guangwei, Senior Application Engineer of ILLUmination Department at OSRAM, sh...

Horticulture lighting technology supplier Heliospectra announced that it has received a new order from Turner Construction in Miami, Florida, USA, for greenhouse projects. The order will be delivered in May 2020. Turner Construction is one of the biggest construction company in the U.S. and provides design, construction, and installation services for multiple commercial-scale greenhouse projects across the United States in 2020. The Heliospectra ELIXIA 600W LED light will support the growth of crop in a wide variety of growing environments to insure quali...

According to the latest investigations by the LEDinside research division of TrendForce, owing to the continued shrinking of pixel pitches, LED shipment for video wall is expected to undergo further growth in 2020. Although the current yearly revenue forecast has been revised from the pre-pandemic figure of US$2.261 billion down to US$1.946 billion, it still represents a 3.7% YoY growth. In terms of the overall LED video wall supply chain, TrendForce indicates that, after the traditional peak seasonality of 4Q19, LED video wall manufacturers had relatively low co...

Osram Opto Semiconductors introduced its new LED product family which suits a wide range of applications. The new Synios S 2222 family can be adopted for customized lighting solutions, electronic devices, ambient lighting for trains and planes and architectural lighting. (Image: Osram) Featuring compact size and brightness, Osram’s Synios S 2222 product family provides an efficient and flexible platform for a variety of low- and mid-power applications (from 10 mA to 200 mA). The product family includes colors of white, blue, green, yellow, red and deep red. ...

Seoul Viosys, the subsidiary of Seoul Semiconductor focusing on UV LED technology, announced that its Violeds technology has been adopted in washing machines and are now mass produced by Chinese companies Hisense and Haier. The laundry tank sometimes contains invisible contamination and germs, causing odors and molds in the washing machine. By implementing Violeds technology from Seoul Viosys, the Chinese companies solved the problem of laundry tank sterilization and deodorization. Seoul Viosys posted its 1Q20 financial results last week noting that its business p...

LED lighting technology helps to enhance sustainability not only by reducing general energy consumption, it also prevent wildlife in many ways. Recently in Alabama, USA, a turtle-friendly LED lighting is installed in the Gulf Coast to protect a wide variety of sea turtles living in the area. Also, Bangor University in the UK found that attaching LED lights to big holes in net can guide non-target species to escape and significantly reduce bycatch. Alabama’s Gulf Coast with beautiful beaches attracts more than five million visitors annually with visitors. And...