Citizen Electronics announced it has signed a licensing agreement with Valoya, a Finnish LED grow light technology developer. With the partnership, Citizen Electronics will apply Valoya's spectrum technology know-how in order to strengthen its COB (chip on board) LED products intended for the horticulture industry. (Image: Valoya) Valoya has launched its patent licensing program in June this year. The patent portfolio accounts Valoya's inventions in the field of light spectra for plant cultivation and lighting applications. “Access to the Valoy...

EOI (Excellence Optoelectronics Inc), the tail light module supplier of Tesla, announced that it has received orders for Mini LED automotive display. The company will continue to expand its Mini LED display portfolio covering automotive applications dashboards, head up displays (HUD) and fine-pitch LED video walls. (Image: EOI) EOI began Mini LED display development in 2018 and set up new facility in Taiwan for Mini LED and Micro LED display production. The company has sent sample of its Mini LED display product to a leading automaker for ...

The market demands for disinfection have climbed significantly this year with the outbreak of COVID-19, leading to greater attention to UVC LED. In addition to surface and air disinfection, water purification is one of the major focuses of UVC LED manufacturers and home appliance brands. Featured with compacted size and installation flexibility, UVC LEDs can be mounted at the outlet of water dispenser to ensure the safety of drinking water. Recently many home appliance brands have launched new products adopting the technology. LG presented its latest refrigera...

Vuzix announced that it is developing next generation product line of smart glasses powered by Micro LED technology that are expected to become available in 2021. (Image: Vuzix) The smart glasses maker said that the Micro LED-based product line will include middle-end consumer-facing product and a higher end enterprise version with built-in cellular connectivity. (Image: Vuzix) Micro LED will be used as projectors for the smart glasses to deliver high density pixel arrays with both monochrome and full color solution. The glasses will also feature a larger field...

Osram announced the expansion of its automotive LED portfolio, launching a new generation of 1 to 4-chip versions in the Oslon Compact PL product family. The company also reported settlement with its contract manufacturer Lextar. The new version of the Oslon Compact PL products feature ceramic components with an electrically insulated pad that makes it much easier to dissipate heat from the package. The design enables a higher current to allow the 1-chip version to achieve an outstanding brightness value of 395 lumens at 1A with a chip area of 1mm². Sized small as 1...

A new deal announced by Heliospectra, a Sweden based horticulture lighting technology provider, unveiled a new approach for achieving urban farming with LED grow lights. (Image: Heliospectra) Heliospectra reported that it has received an order from BBL Construction, who operates as a general contractor in the fields of commercial and institutional construction. According to Heliospectra, the two business partners are going to apply their expertise for several projects. The partnership might indicate that LED grow light and vertical farming facilities are now consi...

University of Texas at Dallas researchers and their international colleagues have developed a method to create Micro LEDs that can be folded, twisted, cut and stuck to different surfaces. The research, published online in the journal Science Advances, helps pave the way for the next generation of flexible, wearable technology. The research team created a detachable Micro LED with flexibility, aiming to fulfill the growing demand for bendable, wearable electronics. Researchers develop the flexible LED through a technique called remote epitaxy. To make it detachable, res...

The pandemic urged many countries to face the issue of food security as the lockdowns have posed threats to areas replying heavily on food import. Food production based on agri-tech demonstrates a feasible solution for the problem. For example, a new vertical farm in Abu Dhabi is going to launch in September to supply fresh veggies for the UAE. The vertical farm company, Smart Acres, has set the vertical farming facilities based on LED lighting and IoT technology in Abu Dhabi at the Armed Forces Officers Club. The company collaborated with a Korean company “...

As the launch of iPhone 12 is approaching, more rumors about the new Apple product were unveiled. Las week, a new Apple leak said that LiDAR sensor is “confirmed” for iPhone 12 Pro Max. Apple predictor Jon Prosser uploaded a video and share a few alleged screenshot of iPhone 12. One of the picture demonstrate the option of “Enable LiDAR CA,” indicating that LiDAR will be featured for the new iPhone. (Image: Jon Prosser's Twitter post) This will not be the first time Apple adopting the sensor component in its product. Th...

The ultimate display technology Micro LED has improved significantly in wafer technology, full color performance and mass transferring recently. Taiwan-based industry players have shared their insights of the technology at an industry gathering last week. Jennifer Y-C Lin, Senior Associate Vice President of AUO, indicated that Micro LED will be a key technology to drive innovative applications in the era of 5G connection and IoT, especially as the world heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. She explained that in addition to excellent display performance,...

In addition to support autonomous driving technology, LiDAR is also adopted for scientists to reach deeper into the underwater world. A research published in Applied Optics presented an approach to detect algae and measure key properties using LiDAR, which reached deeper than has been typically possible using satellites. (Image: Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences) "The LiDAR approach has the potential to fill some important gaps in our ability to measure ocean biology from space," said Collister, a PhD student at Old Dominion University. "T...

As the COVID-19 pandemic is still posing a threat to worldwide communities, UVC light incorporated products for disinfection are becoming more and more popular. Common applications include upper-room UVC disinfection integrated with lighting fixtures or air cleaners, UVC light embedded robots, UVC light boxes and other portable disinfecting products. These UVC light disinfecting products usually deploy either mercury lamps or LEDs as light source. Currently, mercury lamps are more widely adopted for disinfecting products given its lower production cost and highe...

The Singapore company OTSAW who launched UVC LED based disinfecting robot announced that the product’s efficacy has been tested using high concentrations of live samples of human Coronavirus flown from the United States. Based on results and tests carried out by A*STAR completed on August 21st, the robot demonstrated a 99.9% efficacy for disinfection within 5 minutes at a working distance of 2.5 meters. . (Image: OTSAW) The robot O-RX was built in-house by OTSAW and is equipped with a 360-degree camera and LiDAR sensors integrating AI...

A Finland-based vertical farming company iFarm announced that it has raised US$ 4 million funding led by Gagarin Capital, who previously invested in the project. Other investors include Matrix Capital, Impulse VC, IMI.VC and more. With the funding, iFarm said it will deepen its automated indoor farming technology and extend cultivation experiments. (Image: iFarm) iFarm offers vertical farming solutions for growing greens, berries and vegetables. It aims to develop its iFarm Growtune tech platform that enables operations of multiple varieties of vertical farms ...

Sharp, one of the panel providers of Apple, is reportedly developing small size Micro LED displays and will mass produce the products by 2023 for eye-wear smart devices, reported Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun. According to the report, Sharp Fukuyama Semiconductor, a subsidiary of Sharp, has developed Micro LED prototypes including a 0.38-inch full color panel featuring 1053 PPI and a 0.13-inch blue display with 3000 PPI. The company deploys its proprietary color conversion technology to achieve full color display and aims to mass produce the products in 2023 to 2024 for A...

Last September, Volkspark stadium in Humburg, Germany, installed Signify’s LiFi system Trulifi. The system has provided fast and reliable internet connectivity for the journalists and photographers reporting the 2019-2020 season. Stadiums usually have difficulties offering stable and reliable connections for the press center during large sport games as wireless signal in these bustling locations was prone to overload. To tackle the issue, the Volksparkstadion in Hamburg installed LiFi system which uses light to transmit data and allows up to a blistering 250Mbps for...

Ushio and a research group from Kobe University Graduate School of Medicine have completed a study proven that irradiation of filtered 222 nm UV-C light on human skin reduces bacterial counts while causing no injury to the skin. This is the first study on the safety of 222 nm far UVC light conducted on humans. The research paper regarding this study is published on PLOS ONE, titled “Exploratory clinical trial on the safety and bactericidal effect of 222-nm ultraviolet C irradiation in healthy humans.” (Image: Ushio) In this study, Ushio’s C...

Despite the interruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, the development of novel display technologies have to go on. At the virtual Display Week held last week, there were still several new Micro LED display exhibits showcased by worldwide experts. LEDinside selects a few innovations that cannot be missed. AUO AUO exhibited an integrated full color TFT driven Micro LED automotive displays with two 9.4-inch flexible Micro LED panels. Its S-curve shape enables the display to be mounted into automotive interior design. It also demonstrated a 12.1-inch Micro...

Recently United Airlines and Heathrow airport unveiled their disinfecting measures with UVC light respectively. United Airlines is using UVC light to clean pilot flight decks while Heathrow deploys UV cleaning robots and UV handrail for disinfection within the airport. (Image: United Airlines) United Airlines uses handheld, AUVCo blades from the American Ultraviolet company to kill any viruses that may reside on sensitive switches and touch screen displays within the flight deck. The company also applies electrostatic spraying to disinfect its aircraft cabi...

Large size LED video display supplier Daktronics announced its partnership with Austin FC for manufacturing and installing an LED display system with all displays featuring pixel pitch of 10 mm. The installation includes a new main video display, two ribbon displays, a pitch perimeter display and a double-sided marquee and are currently being set up with the stadium’s construction. The project is expected to complete for the 2021 season. (Image: Daktronics) The centerpiece of the installation will be the main video display at the north end of the stadium. It w...

Leading electronics brands are releasing their new consumer products as the peak third season arrived. Novel smartphones, tablets and wearables adopting innovative technologies continue to draw attention from the market. However, the ongoing pandemic has led to global economy decline so that the most eye-catching flagship smartphones lose their edges as they are usually more expensive. People who used to go for the high-end products may now turn to mid-range or budget smartphone under such circumstance. As a result, iPhone SE, the mid-range product of Apple, led to an unexpected s...

Chinese brands TCL and Xioami introduced their new TV products featuring advanced display technologies. TCL launched its new Mini LED backlight TV, 6-series and Xiaomi presented a transparent OLED TV. TCL released 5- and 6-Series Roku TV lines. The 6-series products are based on Mini LED backlight technology with 240 dimming zones that enables brilliantly bright and deeply dark areas to achieve ultra-high contract ratio. According to TCL, the series will be the first TV with THX® Certified Game Mode, supporting a refresh rate of 120Hz. A...

Kyocera and Osram reported worked on a new Micro LED display driving technology. According to a report of MicroLED-info, the two companies have designed a hybrid current and PWM driving technology for Micro LED displays. The new driving scheme can be used to avoid using lower pixel currents through Micro LED chips, as described by Kyocera and Osram. As a result, the approach reduces luminance deviation and color shift even at lower grayscale levels. The new driving technology was demonstrated with Kyocera’s 3.9-inch full color Micro LED display bas...

Energy Harness, a Purdue University affiliated LED lighting manufacturer develop an air disinfection system which can be attached to ceiling to clean the air from upper part of the room with UVC light delivered by embedded LEDs. (Image: Energy Harness/Purdue University) According to Purdue University, the device is designed to utilize the effectiveness of UVC light in killing the SARS-COV-2 family of pathogens. Patricio M. Daneri, managing director of Energy’s Midwest division, said, “Our Active Airflow unit provides the added advantag...

Smart city system expert CIMCON introduced new technology partners to its NearSky™ Connect Partner Program. The program brings together sensor/device manufacturers and application developers to make it easier for cities to specify, procure, and deploy smart city solutions in their efforts to improve public health and safety outcomes. Collectively, this group of partners will provide cities with actionable data on parking, sound, carbon dioxide and flood levels to optimize operations, maintenance and safety through one easy-to-use platform. (Image: CIMCON) ...

Global warming, climate changes and increasing world population are posing threats to the planet we are living on and putting pressure on food security. Leading lighting supplier Signify recently shares its viewpoint of how horticulture lighting based on LED technology can be an enabler for sustainable alternative food production. Signify suggests that using artificial lights in horticulture is one way to increase demand without driving up the resource usage. Grow lights can either supplement natural daylight or replace it entirely. Using them creates a controlled farming envi...

Among the next-gen display technologies based on miniaturized LEDs, while Micro LED is still confronting issues of low yield and high cost, Mini LED backlight display technology has been commercialized and is seeing a thriving future starting next year. Currently at the market, we can see Mini LED backlit gaming notebooks and monitors launched by Acer, Asus, MSI, Lenovo and other notebook brands. The long rumored Mini LED iPad Pro from Apple is another highlight expected by the market and the industry. In addition, Samsung is reportedly debuting a series o...

AMS and Ibeo Automotive Systems confirm that ams VCSEL technology is a core component of Ibeo’s new solid-state LiDAR solution, ibeoNEXT. Ibeo’s LiDAR system will be used in Level-3 automated driving on production vehicles at Great Wall Motor Company starting in 2022. The VCSEL manufacturing technology of ams allows for flexibility in layout design regarding number of pixels, their size and pitch, and specific addressability patterns. The VCSELs can differentiate in scan and flash applications as they are less sensitive to individual e...

Mini LED backlight display applications are spreading with increasing products entering the market including notebooks, monitors and TVs. Leading brands like Apple and Samsung are going to launch products based on the technology in 2021 as well. Meanwhile, TCL, the Chinese TV brands who released Mini LED backlit TVs last year, is reportedly increasing the product shipment. In 2019, TCL launched 65- and 75-inch Mini LED backlit TVs. The company changed its pricing strategy this year by cutting the 65-inch TV from $1,999 to US$999 and the 75-inch from ...

As virtual Display Week goes on, Taiwan-based panel maker AUO announced its demonstration of advanced display technologies covering Micro LED automotive displays, Mini LED medical displays, a full range of gaming displays as well as display applications in smart retail and transportation. Pioneering the next generation display technology, AUO is showcasing a complete series of full color TFT driven Micro LED automotive displays. The 9.4-inch flexible Micro LED display developed jointly by AUO and PlayNitride is now integrated into a automotive display t...