New side view 99-211 and top view 62-127 SMD LED packages offer high luminous intensity and energy savings for TFT LCD backlight applications

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.   

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.

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.

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. 

Some 64m2 of Martin Professional LC Series™ LED panels are being used as dynamic, movable set columns for “The Visit of the Royal Physician” (Livlægens Besøg) at the Copenhagen Opera House, one of the most modern opera houses in the world.

OSRAM Opto will show the latest developments for CCTV and night vision systems in Nuremberg at the Sensor+Test, the international trade fair for sensor, measuring and testing technologies. At the joint “Cluster Sensorik” booth in Hall 12/233 OSRAM will present their flagship, the infrared OSTAR Lighting and also the infrared OSTAR Observation, Golden Dragon and Power TopLED with lens.

At Tokyo's Beautyworld Japan Expo 2009, the U.K.-based company Energist introduced the latest ReGen Light Treatment system.

Sony plans to launch its 9.9mm-thin Bravia ZX1-series in Singapore in June. The super-slim KLV-40ZX1 is Sony’s answer to the latest LED TVs from Samsung. Unlike the Korean comany's 29.9mm-thin offerings, this Japanese concoction uses an A/V media box that communicates wirelessly with its full-HD LCD panel. In addition, the screen has a 10-bit color reproduction to render a billion discreet hues, plus Motionflow 100Hz and image blur reduction technology for smoother and sharper motion.

The Lindenplatz in Hamburg's St. Georg district, a city landmark and also the place the German company Siemens is based, has recently been redesigned with LED solutions by the company in collaboration with the city of Hamburg as well as some local businesses. The lighting manufacturer OSRAM, part of Siemens' industry business unit, has provided the LED lighting modules used in the project.

In Fargo, North Dakota, U.S., the city commission voted 5-0 last week to put an immediate moratorium on LED signs on the premises of business properties. The sign moratorium was sought by the Hawthorne Neighborhood Association. The neighborhood group has been against plans by Steven Stremick of Select Financial to put a cube-shaped light-emitting-diode sign at the corner of 13th Avenue South and University Drive.

Norburn Lighting and Bath, Canada’s destination source for LED lighting, introduces to the Canadian market Design Pro LED Under Cabinet lighting from Kichler.

Seisakusho Co Ltd, a Japan-based company, was showing off an LED headlight used in Toyota's new Prius at Automotive Engineering Exposition 2009, which took place from May 20 to 22, 2009 in Japan. The low beam headlight for the new "Prius" The LED headlight for the new Prius is a low beam assembly which consists of a double projector unit for emitting a focused beam and a unit for emitting a diffused beam.

GlacialTech Inc. is launching star-bright environmentally friendly LED spotlights. The GL-SP30 LED high brightness spotlight  consumes no more than 38W of power and will replace traditional Halogen lamps which usually consume in excess of  300W per lamp. The lifespan of these LED lamps is 35,000Hrs, whereas the halogen spotlight lasts for 3,000hrs only. The predicted savings rate is 88% when compared with Halogen spotlights.

High power AC LED light bulb from LIQUIDLEDS is a new solution to lighting. With the utilization of the unique technology of Liquid Immersed Thermal Management Solution (LITMS), LIQUIDLEDS longs to provide Practical, Reliable and Affordable light bulbs to the general public.

At the Milan Furniture Fair this April, current trends in “light- emitting-diodes” or LEDs were someting to keep an eye out for.  Pictured here is the new lighting line from Philips, a Dutch company that has an edge in the industry of LED lighting. Photo by Shuli Beimel

At the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium in Arlington Thursday, the Cowboys turned on the world's two largest high-definition LED video displays, each 160 feet wide and 72 feet high.

Albeo Technologies Inc., a manufacturer of white-LED general illumination lighting systems, announced that it has been granted two design patents, D592786 and D592785, for its award winning C-Series High-Bay general illumination light fixture. The patents cover Albeo’s unique designs that allow Albeo fixtures to run cooler at higher efficiencies with longer lifetimes.

Greenlight Initiative, a New York headquartered LED-lighting sales and solutions provider, announced yesterday that it has completed qualification of the LED-based replacement lamp product line from Array™ Lighting. With testing and evaluation complete, Greenlight and Array have concluded a national and municipal/public works accounts sales agreement for Array's full line including PAR30, PAR16, MR16 and GU10-type LED replacement lamp products.

In India, colourful Light Emitting Diode (LED) lights have been fixed in almost the entire ivory and textile sections of the Raja Dinkar Kelkar Museum, making the exhibits look more attractive as well as saving energy. The first LED lights were fixed in 2008 when 20 of the display cases were replaced, said Sudhanva Ranade, joint director of the museum.