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.

The Cabinet of Taiwan announced yesterday (April 23) that it will invest NT$ 45 billion ($1.3 billion) to expand and upgrade the island's green industries including solar and wind energy, with the aim to help reduce the island’s fuel consumption and carbon footprint. Windfarms in Kuanyin town of Taiwan

Dai Nippon Printing Co. Ltd has developed a new flexible OLED-based poster by combining a regular EL panel and organic EL panels.

Underwriters Laboratories Inc. (UL), a global leader in product safety testing and certification services, announced Wednesday to become a strategic partner of Luminaire Testing Laboratory, Inc. (LTL) . And it has also become the first Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratory to provide Energy Star testing of LED products.

The Centennial Bulb, the longest burning light bulb in history which has been burning for the last 108 years at fire station No.6 in Livermoore California, has yesterday been replaced with an energy efficient LED bulb.            

Avnet Electronics Marketing, an operating group of the global technology distributor, Avnet, Inc., and the Hong Kong Productivity Council (HKPC) have recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to cooperate in the promotion of the energy-saving LED lighting industry.

Broit Light, a company based in Wayzata, Minnesota, USA has last week launched its initial production of LED bulbs at its production facility in Long Lake. The start-up company has claimed to have come up with a line of more energy-efficient and adaptable light bulbs.

A deep UV LED using diamond semiconductor has been developed by National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology of Japan (AIST), with the details of the development planned to be disclosed at the 56th Spring Meeting of the Japan Society of Applied Physics taking place from March 30.

TXU Energy has just had its parking garage retrofitted with LEDs to reduce energy costs. Lighting Science Group Corporation announced yesterday the completion of the retrofit after replacing the existing 175 watt metal halide light fixtures with state-of-the-art 78 watt light-emitting diode (LED) low bay parking garage fixtures for the garage.

Sarnoff Corp. has launched a new company to focus on the thriving LED lighting market. Lightscape Materials Inc., which is the name of the new venture, has received $3 million in Series A funding from Wisepower Co. Ltd. and Foosung HDS Co. Ltd with the two companies joining Itochu Corp. which is an early stage investor and distributor in Asia for Lightscape Materials.

Seoul Semiconductor Co. will be a supplier of 300 thousand pieces of LED for “LED Farming Demonstration Project” which is organized by Ministry of Economy, Trade & Industry of Japan with the purpose to demonstrate the application of LED in farming lighting.

A video of sheep equipped with LED lights released by Samsung last week to promote its new LED TV range has attracted more than 2 million viewers on YouTube in less than one week.

Philips Lumileds has joined the California Lighting Technology Center(CLTC) as an affiliate member to co-develop market-ready Luxeon LED-based applications with luminaire manufacturers. These applications need to meet the energy efficiency and lighting quality levels of EnergyStar(r) and other regional and national guidelines.

Green energy technology was named the top development priority by Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou on Wednesday, with Solar and LED technologies highlighted as two areas where the island has potential to lead. Green energy technologies have become a popular target. Governments of U.S., Germany and Japan all have listed clean environment technologies as key development fields and have invested to promote the energy saving devices including solar panels.

AIXTRON AG of Aachen, Germany, worldwide leading provider of deposition equipment to the semiconductor industry, announced financial results for fiscal year 2008, ended December 31, 2008. Key Financials

Group III-nitride materials have been widely used for visible and ultraviolet LEDs and blue, violet laser diodes in the past decade. Most of these optoelectronic devices are typically fabricated on the conventional polar (0001) c-plane oriented substrate materials. Devices grown on the polar substrate orientation suffer undesirable spontaneous and piezoelectric polarization resulting in significant band bending in the quantum well. This reduces radiative recombination efficiency and lowers device performance.

Lighting Fair 2009 hold a seminar titled "LED and organic EL pave the road to the future of illumination". The panel discussion was participated by Shuji Nakamura, a professor of the University of California at Santa Barbara, a developer of blue LED and a leader in the research of GaN-based light-emitting element and Junji Kido, who leads the research of the organic EL as a professor of Yamagata University Graduate School of Science and Engineering.

South Korean electronics giant Samsung Electronics Co. is reportedly setting up a 50-50 joint venture with its affiliate Samsung Electro-Mechanics to jointly produce LEDs. It’s disclosed the veture is tentatively named Samsung LED. LEDs are known to have many advantages to traditional light sources, such as low energy consumption, longer lifetime, which are increasingly used in products from mobile phones to flat-screen televisions.

Recently, AIXTRON AG announced an order received in the second quarter 2008 for an MOCVD system from a new customer, Yangzhou Zhongke Semiconductor Lighting Center Co. Ltd. The Close Coupled Showerhead CRIUS system with 31x2" wafer configuration was delivered to Yangzhou Zhongke’s state of the art facility in the Yangzhou High-Tech Venture Services Center, PR China in the fourth quarter 2008. Its application will be for the development and volume production of UHB blue/green LEDs.

Veeco Instruments has to restructure its MOCVD systems business, as the downturn continues to take its toll on the wider semiconductor industry. At Veeco Q4 earnings call, John Peeler, CEO of the company, has announced its MOCVD systems operation in New Jersey would be hit by the latest move. He said their MOCVD systems business would go to a fully outsourced model by the end of the year. He also outlined a number of wider measures to cut costs, including a 26% reduction in workforce. Veeco will employ less than 1000 employees by the end of 2009.

Taiwan Opto Tech has unveiled its new Smart Street Lights using Nichia LEDs. The company says the new LED street lights have four main functions which include a modulized design, a unique cooling technology, a new optical design, and an excellent power module. The fixture is streamlined and ultra-thin, with a depth of only 80mm and will be expected to meet the global market demand. The company currently plans to mass-produce 55W and 105W street lights that can be used with either solar or AC power.

Citizen Electronics of Japan appoints Supreme Components International (SCI) of Singapore as their official distributor for High Brightness LED for ASIAN market. Citizen electronics has been producing LEDs since 1983 and is a major player for mobile phone LED in the world with significant market share. Citizen LEDs have high reliability and high CRI.

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed and demonstrated a new polarization-matched LED. The new type of LED, developed in collaboration with Samsung Electro-Mechanics, exhibits an 18% increase in light output and a 22% increase in wall-plug efficiency, which essentially measures the amount of electricity the LED converts into light.

Taiwan LED maker Epistar Corp. announced that it has won contract orders from Korea’s Samsung for LEDs used in LED-backlit LCD TVs.

Two rival LED makers, Seoul Semiconductor Co., Ltd. and Nichia Corporation announced that they have settled all litigations on patent and other issues as well as other legal disputes currently pending between them in the United States, Germany, Japan, United Kingdom, and Korea. The settlement includes a cross license agreement covering LED and laser diode technologies, which will permit the companies to access all of each other's patented technologies.

Gallium Nitride (GaN), a man-made semiconductor used to make LEDs, emits brilliant light but uses very little electricity. New GaN LED lighting has the potential to make LEDs a household fixture, but high production costs have made GaN lighting too expensive for wide spread use in homes and offices. However the Cambridge University based Centre for Gallium Nitride has developed a new way of making GaN which could produce LEDs for a tenth of current prices.

LED market is expected to be a rare bright spot—no pun intended—in what is forecast to be an otherwise dismal year for the semiconductor industry in 2009, according to a recent report. The reported noted that aided by rising demand from LCD TV makers, revenue from LEDs is expected to increase by 2.9% in 2009, following 10.8% growth in 2008. In contrast, the overall semiconductor market is set to decline by 9.4% in 2009.

Opto Tech Corp. and Nichia Corp. will go further on LED cooperation, with Nichia pledging to increase supply of LED chips to its partner in return for Opto Tech’s commitment to making its chips on a contract basis and selling more of Nichia-branded chips to packagers.

Over the past few years, Taiwan LED manufacturers, from chipmakers and packagers to lighting-module and lamp makers, are beginning to see a payoff from energy efficient products. Taiwan has ranked No. 2 in the global LED supplier, with 2008 revenue estimated to reach around US$1.9 billion, or 26% of world’s total.

The incandescent bulb is about to become obsolete is lost on the vast majority of the public. The phase-out begins in three years as part of the energy bill signed in 2007. They will be edged out by LEDs. So light bulb makers have to revamp some plants, shutter others, and invest enormous sums of money in preparation for a technological shift.