High Power LEDs (HP) and High Brightness LEDs (HB) for lighting purposes offer great opportunities for the lighting industry, as LEDs are energy-efficient and potentially highly reliable. In view of the high power density of these HP/ HB LEDs the major challenge is safe and effective heat dissipation, in order to ensure trouble free functioning, good light yield and a long service life.

Unilux will introduce a range of pulsed LED inspection lights at Labelexpo Europe 2009. Unilux will unveil LED versions of its most widely used stroboscopic inspection lights for label printers in Stand 5D95.

Innovative Quasarbrite Narrow Beam SMT LEDs from Lumex provide 93% decrease in light angle for high-intensity applications QuasarBrite Narrow Beam LEDs also generate up to 50% cost and 50% real estate savings

Some venture capital firms in the U.S. are glowing about energy efficient lighting companies and they are investing large sums of money in this sector, according to an article on Wall Street Journal. New York-based Braemar Energy Ventures and San Francisco-based VantagePoint Venture Partners are both targeting $50 million of investments at energy efficient lighting companies currently. And VantagePoint may increase that amount by another $50 million within the next year.

Hermaphroditic Blade and Receptacle Design Promotes Fast Assembly Tyco Electronics has introduced new wire-to-board plug connectors and board-to-board connectors to its family of hermaphroditic blade and receptacle connectors. The connectors are designed to make connecting of aluminum-clad printed circuit boards, commonly used for LED lighting applications that include lighting controls and LED light modules, faster and easier.

Luna Road, a company that specializes in the design, manufacture, supply and installation of the new high-tech solar powered LED road studs, illuminates the dangerous road leading up to the infamous Tunnel Zurqui in Costa Rica. The Tunnel Zurqui, also known as “The Tunnel of Death” is one of the most dangerous roads in the entire country of Costa Rica.  Many drivers frequently get into serious and fatal accidents on this winding, narrow and dark mountainous road.

Carmanah Technologies has introduced its new solar-powered light: the A650 aviation and obstruction light. Featuring a groundbreaking user interface, replaceable battery pack, intelligent-deployment capability and up to 10 candela of intensity (steady-on), the A650 is ideal for taxiway and apron-edge lighting, emergency airfield and helipad lighting, airfield construction barricade lighting, and obstruction lighting.

SemiLEDs Corp., a Taiwan-based manufacturer of high power LEDs, has recently announced the opening of its third production facility in Hsin-Chu Science Park, Taiwan. This new production facility brings SemiLEDs’ capacity to 15 million 1x1mm high power LED chips per month.

Today Dow Corning Corporation’s Electronics group introduced its newest silicone encapsulant, Dow Corning ®OE-6636, designed for overmolding (compression molding) and dispensing processes. The product provides for a high refractive index (RI) of 1.54 which enables better light output (see Appendix 1, below), has a low moisture uptake, improves thermal aging  and light resistance, and possesses better adhesion to typical substrate for LED packages such as Poly Phthal Amid.

Advanced Analogic Technologies Inc (AnalogicTech) is planning to diversify its product offering and a not-so secret weapon in the form of a proprietary bipolar-CMOS-DMOS process - referred to as modular BCD - which accounts for 30% of the company's revenue at present.

Expanding its popular INVISILED(TM) Tape family of energy-saving display and accent lighting solutions using the latest LED technology,WAC Lighting introduces INVISILED(TM) PALETTE and INVISILED AURA-two new color changing systems with user control. These new systems have been added to the current INVISILED 12v system. WAC Lighting is a manufacturer of track, recessed, undercabinet, decorative and monorail lighting.

Nanometrics Incorporated (Nasdaq:NANO), a supplier of advanced process control metrology systems used primarily in the manufacturing of semiconductors, solar photovoltaics and high-brightness LEDs, today announced orders for one VerteX(TM) and multiple RPMBlue(TM) photoluminescence (PL) mapping metrology systems. The VerteX system is expected to be qualified into a new HB-LED development line, and the RPMBlue systems are expected to be qualified into the high-volume manufacturing line of a different customer.

Energy Focus, Inc. (NASDAQ: EFOI) has recently announced that it is offering a 2, 3, and 4 lamp LED Parking Garage Fixture using its newest LED lighting solution - energy efficient LED Light Tubes - aimed directly at addressing President Obama and Energy Secretary Chu's recent challenge to reduce America's energy consumption for lighting to less than the current 7% of overall energy consumption.

austriamicrosystems, a global designer and manufacturer of analog ICs for communications, industrial, medical and automotive applications, expands its comprehensive LED driver portfolio with the AS1115, an easy to use user interface (UI) LED driver. The AS1115 combines display driving and key scanning to provide a complete front panel solution which eliminates the use of secondary µP or other logics plus discrete devices, reducing BOM count and cost.

Due to increasing global demand of LED (light emitting diode) for TV backlights, Unity Opto Technology Co., a Taiwan-based LED supplier, had recorded a single-month high of NT$340 million (US$10.378 million at US$1: NT$32.76) in sales for June, up by 78% from last June or 5.52% from May, according to company sources.

Samsung Electronics, currently the world’s top TV supplier, is estimated to buy US$7.5 billion worth of components from Taiwan this year for its LED backlit LCD TVs, according to the company, reported The Taiwan Economic News. Samsung plans to ship 2,000,000 units of LED TVs by the end of 2009, a volume estimated to account for 10% of its total TV shipments of the year. The company has delivered 400,000 units in three months after the launch in April, snatching up 90% of the global market.

Cooper Lighting has expanded its range of Axent LED downlights with the introduction of a new model that delivers energy savings of over 54% when used in place of a 1 x 32W or 2 x 18W compact fluorescent luminaire.

South Korea plans to spend 107 trillion won ($84.5 billion), or 2 percent of its annual GDP, in green industries over the next five years, the presidential office said in a statement on Monday. The investment, mainly for encouraging environment-related industries and technologies such as renewable energy, LEDs (light-emitting diodes), smart power grids and hybrid cars, is expected to create up to 1.81 million jobs, the government said.

Two new lamps from GE Consumer & Industrial—a 7-watt GE Energy Smart® LED PAR20 lamp and a 10-watt GE Energy Smart® LED PAR30 lamp—enable restaurants, retailers and other commercial customers to make significant strides toward general lighting with white light-emitting diodes (LEDs). These products of ecomaginationSM, available as spots or floods, feature advanced optical control to concentrate the white LED light on the targeted area and effectively diminish wasted extraneous light.

New developments in gallium nitride (GaN) LEDs could lead to a revolution in lighting for the home and office in five years, says a leading UK materials scientist, Professor Colin Humphreys of Cambridge University.

Japan’s OKI Electric Industry (TOKYO:6703) and OKI Data Corp., which markets under the OKI Printing Solutions brand recently announced that the OKI Group will increase its LED (light-emitting diode) production for print heads used in its non-impact printers, and enhance new LED-related businesses. This will be achieved by acquiring an LED production facility in Japan’s Takasaki City in Gunma Prefecture with a ‘clean room’ that is approximately twice the area of the room used currently.

Everlight Electronics Co., Ltd., currently Taiwan’s biggest LED packager, has recently bought 15.9% of Tecore’s shares to secure supply of LED chips as it expands output to meet rising demand, according to an article on Taiwan Economic News. Everlight acquired the Tecore shares through a private-equity placement, in which Tecore put up 25 million shares for sale to raise NT$350 million (US$10.6 million at US$1:NT$33).

Chuck Swoboda Participates in Presidential Roundtable On American Innovation and Clean Energy Technology Chuck Swoboda, chairman and chief executive officer of Cree (Nasdaq:CREE) joined President Obama at the White House today to discuss the latest developments in energy-efficient technologies. Cree, based in Durham, North Carolina, is a market-leading manufacturer of LED (light-emitting diode) products.

Recently, Solid State Lighting has been a crucial and celebrated element to becoming a partner of global environmental protection.  Using LEDs to replace traditional, high power-consumption lighting systems seems to be the likely trend and solution to reducing power consumption. For the past 26 years, Everlight Electronics, Co., LTD. has endeavored to improve LED technology to address the issue of energy saving and made significant progress in being a pioneer for Green energy.

Evident Technologies Inc. announced the commercial availability of its Evidot LED products based on semiconductor nanocrystal technology. Whereas traditional LEDs are available in a limited set of standard colors (blue, green, red, etc.), Evident’s new products enable LEDs to emit any color, including high-quality white light (see video).

Elation Professional has introduced a moving head that can move . . . anywhere. And a color-changing brick that doesn’t require a wall   to be plugged into. The company added two amazing new “wireless” fixtures to its Event Series of battery-powered DMX-compatible RGB LED portable lights: the Event MH W System and Event Brick System, a moving head and brick color wash, respectively.

AIXTRON AG yesterday announced that it has recently received a further multiple system order from Epistar located at the Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park, Taiwan. The order, to be delivered during 2009, was received in Q2 and will commence delivery in Q3 of 2009. This recent order comprises of CRIUS® Close Coupled Showerhead® (CCS) reactors and AIX 2800G4 HT Planetary Reactor® systems for volume production of GaN-based LEDs.

Barco, a global leader in creative LED technology, has recently announced the world's first transformable LED screen for U2's latest world tour. With its 360° shape, the LED screen surrounds the band while performing and can change shape in all directions during the concert. The screen has 500,000 pixels of video, making it the biggest LED screen ever used in concert touring.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has just released the second draft of ENERGY STAR performance criteria for three SSL luminaire categories: outdoor pole-mounted area and roadway luminaires, outdoor wall-mounted area luminaires, and parking garage/canopy luminaires. The Proposed Category “A” (near-term applications) additions to the Outdoor Area & Parking Garage area include the below: Minimum Light Output Luminaire shall deliver a minimum of 1,000 lumens (initial).

iLEDm is the only manufacturer that has introduced backlight technique into LED packaging. This technique is called LEM (LED Packaging Module).