Horticultural applications of LED lighting are the current trend in the lighting industry. Leading companies around the world have been developing different products to meet the increasing demands. As worldwide need for healthy, fresh food continues to grow, greenhouse growers require efficient, effective lighting to enable year-round growing. Current, powered by GE announced the release of the Arize Element Top Light, the industry’s first one-for-one LED replacement for 1000W High Pressure Sodium (HPS) products. The Arize Element features multiple light...

Using LED as a light source, researchers at Osaka University have now developed a convenient light-driven process for oxidizing polypropylene (PP) without harmful waste. The research team used radicals to make the plastic react. Scholars chose an LED lamp as the light source photo-chemically activate radicals for breaking down the chemical bonds which make plastic unreactive and hard to decompose. "In applications like printing and medical materials, plastics must be surface-modified," explained Tsuyoshi Inoue, co-author of the study. "Oxidizing C-H bo...

Cree announced an update to its financial guidance for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2019. The company modified its revenue forecast of fiscal 4Q19 to the range of US$245 million to 252 million from prior US$263 million to 271 million as the U.S. government put Huawei on a trade blacklist. Cree said the update of financial guidance is in response to the decision on May 15, 2019, by the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) of the U.S. Department of Commerce to add Huawei Technologies and 68 of its affiliates to the “Entity List” maintained by the U.S...

Fohse, a horticulture lighting supplier based in Nevada, USA, announced that it has closed a deal with Curative Cannabis, a Canadian cannabis grower, to supply cannabis grow lights to its growing facility in Ontario. Curative Cannabis has a production capacity that is scheduled to produce up to 3,000 kg (approx. 6,600 lbs) of cannabis per year both for large-scale cultivation. With the supply partnership, Fohse will be deploying its A3i and F1V LED lighting models in Curative Cannabis' 30,000 square foot growing facility. Curative Cannabis expects that its yield...

Plessey, the UK-based semiconductor technology provider, has successfully developed GaN-on-Si monolithic Micro LED. According to the company, the innovative development will support next generation applications such as AR headsets, head-up displays (HUD) and other smart wearables to enter the mass market. Given their high contrast, high speed, wide viewing angle, high brightness and more efficient and longer-lasting operation, Micro LEDs are perfect for display applications on wearables such as smart watches, HUDs and AR headsets. (Image: Plessey) Howeve...

In the manufacturing process of Micro LED display, inspection and repair technologies are indispensable to enhance and assure production yield. But again, given the massive amount of Micro LED chips in tiny size, Micro LED display makers face a great challenge for the testing and repairing process. LED testing includes photoluminescence (PL) and electroluminescence (EL) test, the former method can test LED chips without touching and ruining them but it might not detect all the defects compared to EL test. On the contrary, EL test is able to identify more defec...

Rumors about Apple said that the company will launch Mini LED products in the second half of 2019. Nevertheless, at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference 2019, Mini LED products have not showed up. Instead, Apple presented a 32-inch HDR display, Pro Display XDR which adopts direct LED backlight. (Image: Apple) Pro Display XDR is a 32-inch 6K LCD monitor featuring a resolution of 6,016*3,384, 1,600 nits peak and 1,000 nits sustained brightness and a contract rate of 1,000,000:1. These characteristics were achieved by using a direct ...

An emerging landscape bereft of standards, some have defined Micro LEDs as anything where the LED semiconductor die is smaller than 70 μm down to perhaps 1μm. Larger die are typically called Mini LEDs, used in applications such as local dimming. The semiconductor die are essentially a miniature version of the die in the well-known, commoditized solid-state lighting (SSL LED) industry. Besides physical dimensions, there are some subtle differences between the SSL industry and the display industry. Spectral tuning notwithstanding, the end goal for SSL industry...

LiDAR sensors not only improve road safety for self-driving cars, they can also help in monitoring and care of elderly. IBM began a trial home care service adopting LiDAR sensors with a UK startup company Cera Care. The pilot project will combine IBM’s machine learning software with LiDAR sensors, reported Reuters. IBM Research UK teamed up with Cera Care to develop an elderly home care system to monitor clients’ activity. They will install LiDAR sensors in the houses of 10 to 15 volunteers in the UK since June to track activities of t...

On May 27, 2019, the authorization conference for COMMON Cathode IC of Guangzhou SiliconCore (SiliconCore) was held at Hilton Hotel in Guangzhou. LEDinside, the LED industry research division of TrendForce was honored to have the chance to interview Mr. Eric Li, the President and CEO of Guangzhou SiliconCore on-site. During the conference, Guangzhou SiliconCore demonstrated the latest products of LED display driver IC based on Common Cathode Technology, including SCL8080 series and SCL8081 series. Combined with the control chip develope...

In order to commercialized Micro LED display, the current goal of Micro LED technology developers is to reduce production cost and improve yield through optimizing manufacture process. One obstruction to the goal comes from the production process of mass transferring and bonding, as assembling million Micro LED chips to targeted substrates poses a great challenge for display makers. Micro LED display is made from Micro LED array consisting of a massive amount of Micro LED chips, forming individual pixels. Since the size of Micro LED chips is less than 100 &m...

Mojo Vision, a California-based startup focusing on invisible computing, revealed it Micro LED display featuring 14,000 PPI, which the company claimed to be the smallest and densest dynamic display ever made. The display sized only 0.48mm, same as a grain of sand but it can deliver a pixel density 300 times greater than current smartphone displays. The prototype technology uses Micro LEDs and is expected to be applied in wearable devices including AR/VR hardware and heads up displays (HUDs). (Image: Mojo Vision) According to Mojo Vision, the new monoc...

LED lighting could help to improve brain activity including memory and cognitive function, according to the research by a professor of bioengineering at The University of Texas at Arlington. Hanli Liu and Jacek Dmochowski, the assistant professor of bioengineering at City University of New York, are working on using a light-based technology to increase the energy available to brain cells and improve astronaut performance with an $800,000 NASA grant. Liu researches how to use lasers to deliver near-infrared light to the human brain to detect traumatic brain injurie...

glō, the Swedish-American Micro LED company, has been progressing its Micro LED technology since it exhibited the world’s brightest Micro LED display with JDC at Display Week 2018. In 2019, the company showcased four prototypes of Micro LED display including smartwatch display, AR display, HUD and a smartphone-sized panel with Kyocera during Display Week. (Image:glō) The solution of glō features two technology, RGB InGaN Micro LED and direct wafer transfer onto different substrate materials including silicon (CMOS), glass (LTO...

During Display Week 2019, LEDinside noted that Chinese LED makers and panel producers become strong industry players in Micro LED technology developments. The country was also ranked the second in the world with its Micro LED patent application, according to the statistics of the Korean Intellectual Property Office. The National Intellectual Property Administration of China published a patent applied by BOE which focuses on Micro LED transferring. In the patent application, BOE proposed a mass transfer solution with high efficiency in which a magneti...

Velodyne announced that it has won a patent lawsuit filed by its competitor Quanergy. The US Patent Trial and Appeals Board ruled the validity of Velodyne’s US Patent 7,969,558 on May 23, 2019. According to Velodyne, the patent is related to a LiDAR based 3D point cloud measuring system used for Autonomous Vehicles, ADAS, Robotic vision, and other diverse applications. “Velodyne Lidar is the inventor of the surround view LiDAR and we were confident that our patent would be upheld,” said Marta Hall, President of Velodyne Lidar. &ldqu...

In the latest report of LEDinside, titled “LEDinside 2019 Micro LED Next Generation Display Key Technology Report,” Micro LED technology not only features excellent performance in brightness and contrast that surpass OLED, its fast response time, low power consumption and reliability make it a perfect option for mobile and automotive applications. However, complicated production process which leads to low yield and high production cost has slowed down the commercial progress of Micro LED display. One of the challenges lies in the quality of Micr...

CIMCON Lighting, who focuses on smart city solutions and outdoor lighting management systems, launched the next generation of its smart city platform, NearSky. The updated platform includes smart city solutions consisting of sensors, devices and developer tools to simplify digital cities development. CIMCON's NearSky platform is able to transform a city's existing streetlight infrastructure into a city-wide network of connected outdoor digital assets with a streetlight-mounted edge data processor and cloud-based data management software that collect, distribute a...

Aurora, the self-driving technology developer, announced its plan to acquire Blackmore, a US-based LiDAR company, asserting LiDAR as a critical component for autonomous vehicle. In Aurora’s announcement, the company noted that on top of its prior knowledge of self-driving technology, it is now focusing on the next generation LiDAR technology called Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW). Blackmore, with its expertise in FMCW, will provide Aurora advantages of high dynamic range, single photon sensitivity, and interference immunity, which advance s...

RaonTech, a Korean company who provides micro-display solution for AR/VR devices, announced its development of a 0.37-inch micro display with full HD (1920*1080) resolution based on LCoS technology. The display targets the rising market of wearable devices including head mounted display (HMD) and head-up display (HUD). (Image: RaonTech) According to RaonTech, the micro-display is consisted of liquid crystal and a special mirror on silicon wafer and driven by an RGB LED. Through the special mirror, the LED can increase pixel density of the small size d...

LED lighting installed on supermarket shelves is killing the reducing key nutrients in milk and shortening its shelf life, according to a new report by researchers from Newcastle University. The report, titled “Milk: Light exposure and depletion of key nutrients,” shows that high-intensity lighting, such as that found in supermarket dairy cabinets, damages nutrition value of milk by degrading essential nutrients such as Vitamin A, Vitamin B2 (riboflavin) and Vitamin D. Researchers found that milk begins to lose vitamin A after two hours of exposure to LED...

Japanese LED maker Nichia Corporation announced that it has terminated its investment in Advanced Optoelectronic Technology (AOT), a LED packaging company under the Foxconn Group. Nichia reported on May 24, 2019 that it has sold all of common stock of AOT by the end of March 2019 which was held by its subsidiary Nichia Taiwan Corporation. Nichia ranked the top for global LED packaging manufacturer in 2018, according to the analysis of LEDinside. The company continues its developments in niche applications including deep UV LEDs and human centric li...

Despite that more and more industry players across the world have built partnership and poured resources into Micro LED development and research, the commercialization of the next generation display technology is still delaying. Due to technology barriers and equipment limitation, production cost for Micro LED display remains sky high, leading to postponed timeline of Micro LED display commercialization. But why is the manufacture of Micro LED display so difficult? What are the challenges occurred during Micro LED production that slow down the commercial progress? ...

Patently Apple reported that the US Patent and Trademark Office have published several new patents for Apple recently including two patents of Micro LED chip transferring and structure and one related to a head-mounted system with a holographic element. The first patent of Micro LED transferring, titled Micro LED Display, described a Micro LED structure with a metallization layer between a bonding layer and the micro p-n diode, as well as a conformal dieletric barrier layer. The structure of Micro LED enables a phase change during chip transferring and enabl...

Scientists warned that intensive exposure of blue light through heavy usage of electronical devices such as mobile phones and tablets might affect sleeping quality. A new study showed that by limiting or blocking evening exposure to light-emitting screen for one week, sleep quality for teenagers can be improved. The collaborative study by the Netherlands Institute of Neuroscience, the Amsterdam UMC and the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment indicates that by simply limiting exposure to blue-light emitting devices in the evening, adolescents can ...

In 2017, MIT researchers developed light-emitting plants by infusing nanoparticles into plants. With the technology, scientists hope to create a greener solution for lighting which electricity will no longer be necessary. The idea then led to an interdisciplinary collaboration between an MIT architecture professor and a professor of chemical engineering. Michael Strano, the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT, and his team implanted an enzyme that turns the plants’ stored energy into light, making plants glow like how fireflies do. Based on ...

Integrated with sensors, IoT technology and data management system, smart lighting applications are believed to improve convenience of life and efficiency of energy usage. Worldwide lighting companies have also been expanding smart lighting product and system development. GE lighting recently announced the launch of its C by GE smart lighting series products while Silicon Labs and Signify announced partnership on the Friends of Hue program. GE Lighting launched the new C by GE series including Full Color Lights, Tunable White bulbs, Smart Switches, and a Smart ...

Lighting companies like Osram and Signify have extended their lighting solutions to smart applications in office and building. And now semiconductor company Arm is joining the market. UK-based semiconductor and software supplier Arm launched Space Analytics as part of the Arm Pelion Smart Spaces solutions for property managers to optimize space usages. Based on Arm’s Pelion IoT platform, Space Analytics securely gathers and analyzes data from off-the-shelf IoT devices (such as smart lighting, sensors, locks, IP cameras, badge readers) to deliver actionable i...

Starting today on May 21, LIGHTFAIR International (LFI) 2019 is taking place in Philadelphia this year. Leading LED and lighting companies across the world including Cree Lighting, Current by GE, Osram and more are presenting their latest lighting technology and innovative products at the event. Connected lighting, human centric lighting and architecture lighting are focuses of the international firms. Cree Lighting, now fully owned by Ideal Industries, will showcase its new product portfolio for indoor, outdoor and intelligent lighting at LFI 2019. Fo...

To further speed up autonomous driving technology development, LiDAR producers are strengthening their cooperation with different strategic partners. Cepton announced partnership with Dataspeed, an autonomous vehicle solution provider while Aeye reported an investment from Japan-based component maker Aisin. Meanwhile, Quanergy revealed that it has met automotive requirement. 3D LiDAR solutions developer Cepton Technologies announced that it has partneredp with autonomous vehicle solution specialist Dataspeed. Through the partnership, Dataspeed’s customers will ...