LED lighting fixtures have accounted for fully half of all Underwriters Laboratories (UL) approvals in Taiwan, reports the Taiwan branch of the safety certification organization, comparing with the average 30% ratio worldwide, according to a report on Taiwan Economic News.

Progressive Cooling Solutions is taking a Russian technology for keeping satellite electronics cool and bringing it down to earth to cool LEDs. The US-based company has raised $1.5 million in seed funding from Siemens Technology-to-Business to mesh two technologies – micro loop heat pipes developed by Russian scientists, and a "silicon wick”, which is a silicon membrane with pores about 5 microns wide and 500 microns deep, developed by company founder and CTO Ahmed Shuja while at the University of Cincinnati.

The Flexible Display Center at Arizona State University and Universal Display Corp. recently announced a breakthrough in advancing displays with organic light-emitting diodes.

Labsphere and Orb Optronix, two light measurement companies both based in the U.S., have announced a collaboration to accelerate the development of LED measurement instruments. The two companies say they will cooperate on the development of a broad range of new LED, display and light metrology products. Also, selected Orb Optronix instruments for LED testing will be manufactured at Labsphere’s New Hampshire facility.

Last month, in the Province of Ontario, Canada, Bill 150 was given Royal Assent signing into law the new Green Energy Act, 2009. This Act is intended to build a green economy in Ontario, under the leadership of Ontario Minister of Energy and Infrastructure, George Smitherman.

Five Light-emitting diode (LED) corporate sponsors have recently teamed with the California Lighting Technology Center (CLTC) at the University of California-Davis to hold an LED design contest. In the contest, 28 student participants were required to build working prototypes of new products employing LEDs in a quarter-long course.

Cree, Inc. announced yesterday that it has signed a definitive agreement with RFHIC Corporation (Suwon, Korea) for Cree to supply GaN-on-SiC transistors to RFHIC for their GaN HEMT amplifier product families.

LEDtronics Inc. has announced the latest addition to its series of high-power PAR30-style LED spotlight bulbs. The white-body, medium-beam PAR30 LED bulb is made up of five 3-W LEDs and replaces filament-based PAR30 bulbs, combining advanced LED technologies, a standard 26-mm Edison screw-in base and a light optimizing design, producing 337 lm of vivid warm-white light.

Wavien, Inc., a U.S.-based lighting provider, recently announced the introduction of its highly efficient "Premien" white LED technology for front projector applications. The output efficiency of the patented Premien technology is up to two times higher than competing LED technologies, with no reduction in lifetime.

Royal Philips Electronics will cooperate with BVB Substrates, a horticultural supplier based in the Netherlands, to develop LED lighting-based applications for greenhouse-based flower and vegetable cultivation. The two companies have signed a memorandum-of-understanding for combining their respective strengths in the development.

In Pennsylvania, the U.S., Perkasie and Quakertown are the latest municipalities to apply for federal stimulus grants to save energy and money on streetlights. The two boroughs collaborate to apply for a $1.5 million grant from the Pennsylvania Energy Development Authority to replace the bulbs in their streetlights with energy-efficient LEDs - light-emitting diodes. Perkasie plans to replace all 880 of its streetlights, and the state grant would cover 75 percent of the $969,675 price tag, said Manager Dan Olpere.

Lighting Science Group Corporation (Lighting Science), a global developer and integrator of intelligent LED lighting solutions and Martin Professional A/S, a provider of dynamic lighting systems, yesterday announced a distribution agreement that will give Martin access to Lighting Science's X16 DOTZ LED strings for global distribution. The X16 DOTZ LED string has been well-received in the market since its introduction and will be marketed under the name FlexDOT in Martin's line of LED video products.

Scientists of the West Virginia University Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, have been developing the next generation of light-emitting diode (LED) lighting that will be much more efficient than anything now on the commercial market. The study was the subject of an initial grant based on IC INOVA’s LED design and funding. A recent memorandum of understanding between the WVU Research Corporation and IC INOVA, a Japanese company, demonstrates their support in the progress of the WVU LED research.

Microsemi Corporation, a manufacturer of analog/mixed signal integrated circuits and semiconductors, just extended its comprehensive line of backlight-driving IC solutions with the production release of the company's LX24132 32-port LED backlight controller and LX23108L 8-port LED driver.

CRS Electronics (“CRS”), the operating subsidiary of Podium Capital Corporation (TSX-V:LED), an engineer, designer and manufacturer of LED lighting, today rang the morning bell to begin market trading. CRS’s President and founder Scott Riesebosch along with other company representatives were excited to meet with senior members of the TSX Venture Exchange team to celebrate their new listing in the fast growing clean technology sector.

OSRAM Opto Semiconductors is enriching the projection market with two new LEDs, OSTAR Compact and OSTAR Power Projection. OSTAR Compact is designed for small efficient systems in cell phones, PDAs and MP4 players, while OSTAR Power Projection is targeted at high-performance projection applications such as home cinema systems of 70 inches and more. The LED portfolio from this semiconductor specialist now provides full coverage of the projection sytem range from 1 W to 300 W.   

2009 Taiwan Solid State Lighting (2009 tSSL) will be on June 11 ~12, 2009 in Taiwan.

Steinel, a German manufacturer of intelligent lighting fixtures, has introduced its XLed range of security floodlights powered by LUXEON Rebel LEDs that use one-third of the energy consumed by conventional floodlights. The XLed is available as the XLed 25, with 25 LUXEON Rebel for very high luminous flux and total power consumption of about 60 watts, and the more compact XLed 10 with 10 LUXEON Rebel and total power consumption of approximately 25 watts.

UltraTech's lighted tweezers and mechanical pickup tool have white LEDs built in to help you see what you're grabbing. The LEDs (light-emitting diodes) shed light on hard-to-see places to make the task easier. The tweezers come in three styles, all of which are a little more than 6 inches long. The pickup tool is 24 inches long and can grasp items up to 1 inch across.

Every year, Everlight Electronics Co. LTD. presents the latest and most exciting exhibition of products at Guangzhou International Lighting Exhibition, China and Photonics Festival Taipei, Taiwan. This year, Everlight maintains the role of an LED pioneer and presents multiple LED lighting fixtures. The visitors who visit Everlight’s booth can really experience the difference between LED lighting and traditional lighting, and visitors can realize how much power we can save by replacing LED lighting fixtures.

AIXTRON AG recenlty announced that the Institute of Semiconductors of The Chinese Academy of Sciences, located in Beijing, PR China, has placed an order for one Close Coupled Showerhead (CCS) 3x2 inch MOCVD system. Ordered in the first quarter and to be shipped in third quarter 2009, the new tool will be used for the research and development of semiconductor lasers and LEDs.

At the Society for Information Display’s (SID’s) Display Week 2009 conference in San Antonio, TX, Sharp Microelectronics of the Americas (SMA) announced an expansion to its LED-backlit and touch screen display product lines. Two new TFT-LCDs – one 5.0-inch panel with resistive touch and one 7.0-inch panel – deliver LED backlighting rated at 50,000 hours of operation. Additionally, both panels feature built-in LED drivers, saving engineers time, effort, and expense.

NEC LCD Technologies, and its sales and marketing channel in the Americas, NEC Electronics America, Inc., last week announced the development of a new amorphous-silicon color thin-film-transistor (TFT) liquid crystal display (LCD) module that achieves an ultra-wide color gamut for 100 percent of the Adobe® RGB color range by incorporating a newly developed LED light-source unit into the backlight system and a newly developed color filter.

At the Western Railway in India, commuters will soon see new LED screens at suburban stations with improved clarity and with speakers attached. A sample LED screen has already been installed at Andheri station. If it works out, similar LED screens will be seen at other stations soon. Three years ago, LCD screens were installed at stations by SV Media Private Ltd, but they were removed afterwards. Last year, 90 LCD screens were installed near the booking office windows, but these are mute and rather small in size.

The Peace Bridge, a landmark crossing between United States and Canada, has achieved a dramatic new look with the energy-saving light emitting diode (LED) technology. The $1.2 million project was funded by the federal government's Transportation Enhancement Program, with support from the Buffalo and Fort Erie Public Bridge Authority.

UPEK®, a global provider of enterprise and consumer biometric fingerprint solutions, yesterday unveiled its TouchLight™ technology which integrates light emitting diodes (LEDs) for user prompting and feedback directly into the company’s broadly adopted fingerprint sensors. UPEK is demonstrating TouchLight integrated LED technology at the Computex Trade Show in Taipei, Taiwan June 2-6, 2009.

Dow Corning has established a new silicone production unit exclusively for LEDs in Jincheon, Korea, to support the global LED market and meet the needs of its customers in Asia. The Jincheon site will manufacture silicone intermediate materials and encapsulants for use in LED packaging applications, protecting LEDs from environmental elements such as humidity and moisture, and providing stress relief and UV resistance. Silicone encapsulants thereby increase light output and minimize heat build-up.

The Flexible Display Center (FDC) at Arizona State University and Universal Display Corporation yesterday introduced the first a-Si:H active matrix flexible organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display to be manufactured directly on DuPont Teijin's polyethylene naphthalate (PEN) substrate.

HPLighting has devoted substantial R&D effort on enhancing its proprietary technologies and has successfully renovated a revolutionary substrate structure and proprietary automated packaging process to produce a series of cost effective new generation compact sized high power LEDs. The new proprietary automated packaging process enables SHOCK series to offer accurate and stable manufacturing yields and shorter lead time for a competitive edge over cost and delivery. 

In order to complete the Primax product portfolio and fulfill lighting market demand, DOMINANT is now extending this series with high Color Rendering Index (CRI) products in 0.2-Watt white and warm white versions, NA2W-PSC and NA2F-PSC. These high CRI products are compliant to United State Energy Star guidelines; fulfilling minimum CRI required of 75.