Plessey, the UK-based semiconductor technology provider, has successfully developed GaN-on-Si monolithic Micro LED. According to the company, the innovative development will support next generation applications such as AR headsets, head-up displays (HUD) and other smart wearables to enter the mass market. Given their high contrast, high speed, wide viewing angle, high brightness and more efficient and longer-lasting operation, Micro LEDs are perfect for display applications on wearables such as smart watches, HUDs and AR headsets. (Image: Plessey) Howeve...

The Zumtobel Group has teamed up with Casambi, the wireless lighting control company based in Finland to work on wireless lighting controls based on Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). The strategic partnership ensures an extensive new range of Thorn and Zumtobel luminaires offering seamless control to users via Casambi’s BLE software control platform. Furthermore, a series of Tridonic drivers is now also ‘Casambi-Ready’, allowing luminaire manufacturers to easily integrate wireless controls within their products to reduce cost and complexity. Additionally...

According to LEDinside's latest report-2019 Global Automotive LED Market Report- Passenger Car and Box Truck, in 2018, global trade frictions and economic recession had a negative impact on the development of vehicle market, leading to a decline in annual vehicle sales. In 2019 , although the instability of global economic condition still continues, sales volume of new energy vehicles still shows rapid growth, and is expected to be the major driving force of total vehicle sales in the future. In terms of regional market development, sales growth of vehicles in some eme...

In the manufacturing process of Micro LED display, inspection and repair technologies are indispensable to enhance and assure production yield. But again, given the massive amount of Micro LED chips in tiny size, Micro LED display makers face a great challenge for the testing and repairing process. LED testing includes photoluminescence (PL) and electroluminescence (EL) test, the former method can test LED chips without touching and ruining them but it might not detect all the defects compared to EL test. On the contrary, EL test is able to identify more defec...

Rumors about Apple said that the company will launch Mini LED products in the second half of 2019. Nevertheless, at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference 2019, Mini LED products have not showed up. Instead, Apple presented a 32-inch HDR display, Pro Display XDR which adopts direct LED backlight. (Image: Apple) Pro Display XDR is a 32-inch 6K LCD monitor featuring a resolution of 6,016*3,384, 1,600 nits peak and 1,000 nits sustained brightness and a contract rate of 1,000,000:1. These characteristics were achieved by using a direct ...

An emerging landscape bereft of standards, some have defined Micro LEDs as anything where the LED semiconductor die is smaller than 70 μm down to perhaps 1μm. Larger die are typically called Mini LEDs, used in applications such as local dimming. The semiconductor die are essentially a miniature version of the die in the well-known, commoditized solid-state lighting (SSL LED) industry. Besides physical dimensions, there are some subtle differences between the SSL industry and the display industry. Spectral tuning notwithstanding, the end goal for SSL industry...

When it comes to the presentation of goods, merchandise and works of art, the right lighting helps to create a special atmosphere and to delight viewers. However, different products, materials and colors require specific lighting moods. Tridonic offers a wide range of products for special lighting tasks; with the new LED modules in the seventh-generation SLE excite (EXC) series meeting the criteria for demanding applications in food, fashion and art. (Image: Tridonic) Tridonic’s broad portfolio of LED modules offers the right light for any object such as freshly...

LiDAR sensors not only improve road safety for self-driving cars, they can also help in monitoring and care of elderly. IBM began a trial home care service adopting LiDAR sensors with a UK startup company Cera Care. The pilot project will combine IBM’s machine learning software with LiDAR sensors, reported Reuters. IBM Research UK teamed up with Cera Care to develop an elderly home care system to monitor clients’ activity. They will install LiDAR sensors in the houses of 10 to 15 volunteers in the UK since June to track activities of t...

The world’s biggest lighting company Signify announced its achievement of carbon neutrality for its Latin American operations, putting the company well on track to realize carbon neutrality for all of its operations in 2020. Since 2016, Signify already became carbon neutral in the US, Greater China, the Benelux, Middle East & Turkey, Canada, Iberia, UK & Ireland, France and Italy, Israel & Greece. The team in Latin America achieved carbon neutrality by reducing carbon emissions in 2018 by 22% including a reduction of 61% from air freight, 20% fr...

Seoul Semiconductor continues to expand its European enforcement. The Korean company announced that that it has filed a patent infringement lawsuit in Germany in the District Court of Düsseldorf against Leuchtstark Vertriebs GmbH, a European LED lighting distributor, asserting infringement of Seoul’s LED patents. Seoul is currently investigating Leuchstark’s OEM/ODM manufacturers as well as other distributors. In its complaint, Seoul asserts that this distributor is selling a “MEGAMAN” brand lighting product that infringes...

According to the latest report “2019 Chinese LED Chip and Package Industry Market Report” from LEDinside, a division of the market research firm TrendForce, in 2018, the scale of Chinese LED package market was USD 10.5 billion, enjoying an increase of 4.5% YoY. Looking into 2019, since LED lighting industry has entered the mature period, manufacturers are expecting a larger market demand for high-end lighting, like professional lighting and healthy lighting. In addition, UV-LED, automotive lighting and digital display (video wall) will be the maj...

On May 27, 2019, the authorization conference for COMMON Cathode IC of Guangzhou SiliconCore (SiliconCore) was held at Hilton Hotel in Guangzhou. LEDinside, the LED industry research division of TrendForce was honored to have the chance to interview Mr. Eric Li, the President and CEO of Guangzhou SiliconCore on-site. During the conference, Guangzhou SiliconCore demonstrated the latest products of LED display driver IC based on Common Cathode Technology, including SCL8080 series and SCL8081 series. Combined with the control chip develope...

Guangzhou International Lighting Exhibition (GILE) will kick off this weekend and is welcoming fairgoers to its THINKLIGHT event. This year the organizers have invited worldwide leading figures from the lighting community to contribute to the program through a lineup of talks, presentations and panel discussions. What’s next for lighting? The event program on the main stage will be completely comprised of panel discussions in order to bring together multiple voices and invite a greater level of discussion Signify, OSRAM and OPPLE will gather on stage...

SpecGrade LED, a US-based industrial LED lighting manufacturer, announced its progress of LED grow light. Its horticultural lighting products have been certificated by Underwriters Laboratory (UL) and approved by the DesignLights Consortium (DLS). The company’s LED grow light series, the Verta-8 and Verta-4, acquired the UL 8800 Certification offered by UL. The certification was set due to the uniquely harsh environment of a grow facility, where dust, dampness, and air debris combined with high temperatures and humidity combine to create a unique ...

Oldendorff Carriers, a German shipping company, announced that it has started to equip LED lighting for its entire fleet of bulk carriers. The shipping company has analyze the different LED lights and found that LED will boost lighting efficiency up to 80 percent in comparison with traditional lighting. After tests on 4 ships were completed, Oldendorff decided to switch to LED lighting with the positive feedbacks from aboard. (Image: Oldendorff Carriers) Oldendorff has finished the LED lighting installation on the first six ships and will continue to adopt L...

A Leap in Market Value The transparent display market is expected to continue growing steadily up to 2019. With the maturing technology, lower costs, and market acceptance, the global market of LED transparent displays is expected to achieve an astonishing growth of US$87 billion by 2025. Applications of LED Transparent Displays In business operation, it has always been the key issue for owners to attract customers and maintain popularity. It is common to see the exteriors, like display windows, of commercial buildings decorated with semi-transparent plastic sheet...

In order to commercialized Micro LED display, the current goal of Micro LED technology developers is to reduce production cost and improve yield through optimizing manufacture process. One obstruction to the goal comes from the production process of mass transferring and bonding, as assembling million Micro LED chips to targeted substrates poses a great challenge for display makers. Micro LED display is made from Micro LED array consisting of a massive amount of Micro LED chips, forming individual pixels. Since the size of Micro LED chips is less than 100 &m...

Mojo Vision, a California-based startup focusing on invisible computing, revealed it Micro LED display featuring 14,000 PPI, which the company claimed to be the smallest and densest dynamic display ever made. The display sized only 0.48mm, same as a grain of sand but it can deliver a pixel density 300 times greater than current smartphone displays. The prototype technology uses Micro LEDs and is expected to be applied in wearable devices including AR/VR hardware and heads up displays (HUDs). (Image: Mojo Vision) According to Mojo Vision, the new monoc...

Klaran, a product line of Asahi Kasei’s subsidiary Crystal IS, announced the addition of a new 60mW UVC LED to its water disinfection (WD) series. In an advanced prototype reactor, the 60mW LED has demonstrated effective and affordable water treatment at flow rates up to three liters per minute, with disinfection rates comparable to NSF/ANSI 55 Class “A.” Klaran’s current WD series LEDs and water treatment reactors are used to treat point of use water at flow rates up to two liters per minute and at disinfection rates comparable w...

LED lighting could help to improve brain activity including memory and cognitive function, according to the research by a professor of bioengineering at The University of Texas at Arlington. Hanli Liu and Jacek Dmochowski, the assistant professor of bioengineering at City University of New York, are working on using a light-based technology to increase the energy available to brain cells and improve astronaut performance with an $800,000 NASA grant. Liu researches how to use lasers to deliver near-infrared light to the human brain to detect traumatic brain injurie...

glō, the Swedish-American Micro LED company, has been progressing its Micro LED technology since it exhibited the world’s brightest Micro LED display with JDC at Display Week 2018. In 2019, the company showcased four prototypes of Micro LED display including smartwatch display, AR display, HUD and a smartphone-sized panel with Kyocera during Display Week. (Image:glō) The solution of glō features two technology, RGB InGaN Micro LED and direct wafer transfer onto different substrate materials including silicon (CMOS), glass (LTO...

During Display Week 2019, LEDinside noted that Chinese LED makers and panel producers become strong industry players in Micro LED technology developments. The country was also ranked the second in the world with its Micro LED patent application, according to the statistics of the Korean Intellectual Property Office. The National Intellectual Property Administration of China published a patent applied by BOE which focuses on Micro LED transferring. In the patent application, BOE proposed a mass transfer solution with high efficiency in which a magneti...

Velodyne announced that it has won a patent lawsuit filed by its competitor Quanergy. The US Patent Trial and Appeals Board ruled the validity of Velodyne’s US Patent 7,969,558 on May 23, 2019. According to Velodyne, the patent is related to a LiDAR based 3D point cloud measuring system used for Autonomous Vehicles, ADAS, Robotic vision, and other diverse applications. “Velodyne Lidar is the inventor of the surround view LiDAR and we were confident that our patent would be upheld,” said Marta Hall, President of Velodyne Lidar. &ldqu...

In the latest report of LEDinside, titled “LEDinside 2019 Micro LED Next Generation Display Key Technology Report,” Micro LED technology not only features excellent performance in brightness and contrast that surpass OLED, its fast response time, low power consumption and reliability make it a perfect option for mobile and automotive applications. However, complicated production process which leads to low yield and high production cost has slowed down the commercial progress of Micro LED display. One of the challenges lies in the quality of Micr...

The ELGC-300-DA series is a newly developed LED driver with DALI 2 dimming function which can apply to intelligent dimming control interface and further increase the value of luminaires Besides, the ELGC-300 series adopts the constant power mode design to reduce the compatible issue. It is also equipped with 3 in 1, DALI 2 and programmable dimming functions. The isolation design between the output and dimming cables is added to enhance the safety of luminairy usage. ELGC-300 series is compliant with the latest safety regulation: IEC61347/ UL8750 and GB...

Horticulture lighting solution supplier Heliospectra introduced a new high voltage fixture to its expanding product portfolio. The new ELIXIA model features a high input voltage ranging from 277- 480VAC power supply for the company's fully adjustable spectrum and software-controlled LED light solution. The high input voltage ELIXIA fixture is suitable for larger facilities using industrial scale electrification for cultivation and crop production. (Image: Heliospectra) Heliospectra's new 600W high voltage ELIXIA fixture is an addition to the comp...

BIOS Lighting, a LED lighting provider specialized in biological applications, announced that it has received Underwriters Laboratories (UL) Verification, confirming its solutions are designed for circadian health, wellness and productivity. BIOS Lighting has developed lighting solutions infused with its proprietary SkyBlue® technology which enables a wavelength spectrum of 490nm that reflects the peak sensitivity of melanopsin, a photopigment dedicated to circadian health. The SkyBlue lighting solution has officially passed UL Verification for Blue Spectru...

The 2019 Taiwan International Lighting Show (TILS) rounded off in the beginning of May. The show demonstrated that LED technology has delved deep into general lighting, and major LED lighting manufacturers have expanded to multiple niche applications. However, regardless of the changes and upgrades in applications, LED driver is always the core element of lighting and the heart of electronic application. As LED lighting moves towards differentiation and niche development, how will LED driver, the star behind the scenes, play to its strengths and keep up with th...

CIMCON Lighting, who focuses on smart city solutions and outdoor lighting management systems, launched the next generation of its smart city platform, NearSky. The updated platform includes smart city solutions consisting of sensors, devices and developer tools to simplify digital cities development. CIMCON's NearSky platform is able to transform a city's existing streetlight infrastructure into a city-wide network of connected outdoor digital assets with a streetlight-mounted edge data processor and cloud-based data management software that collect, distribute a...

Aurora, the self-driving technology developer, announced its plan to acquire Blackmore, a US-based LiDAR company, asserting LiDAR as a critical component for autonomous vehicle. In Aurora’s announcement, the company noted that on top of its prior knowledge of self-driving technology, it is now focusing on the next generation LiDAR technology called Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW). Blackmore, with its expertise in FMCW, will provide Aurora advantages of high dynamic range, single photon sensitivity, and interference immunity, which advance s...