As the market is expecting Apple and Samsung to release products adopting Mini LED backlight display technology, companies of the supply chain are gearing up with increase production to meet the hiking demands. These big names are reportedly securing their LED chip supply from manufacturers in Taiwan, Korea and China. (Image: Pixabay) Samsung, who is likely to release Mini LED backlit TVs series in 2021, has been in talk with Episar, Lextar, Sanan and HC Semitek to make sure that its demands of 30 billion Mini LED chips for over 3 million TV units wou...

Sensing technologies have been wide adopted for applications that aim to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Several solutions used LiDAR sensors to keep social distance between people or to control people flow based on object detecting. Spectral sensing, on the other hand, can be applied for medical testing for COVID-19 virus. Austrian sensor expert AMS recently announced its collaboration with two German medical companies for such applications. AMS said that it is providing its AS7341L spectral sensor to midge medical, a German medical technology startup from B...

LG Display (LGD) announced that it is showcasing next-generation OLED technologies at Display Week 2020, which is holding online this week from August 3 to 7. LGD presented foldable and transparent OLED products including a 65-inch and a 12.8-inch rollable OLED, a 13.3-inch foldable OLED, 65-inch bendable OLED, and 55-inch transparent OLED with 40% transparency. These foldable, bendable and transparent OLED products are featured in the “Unlimited Design Freedom Zone” at LGD’s virtual showroom. (Image: LGD) LGD ...

SmartKem is a UK-based organic semiconductor materials producer and it has announced its development of Mini LED backlight prototypes for full array local dimming aimed at TV, monitors and signage applications. The company is showcasing its development at Display Week 2020, which is virtually taking place this week. Organic materials for organic thin-film transistors using SmartKem materials can be used to manufacture active matrix backplanes, driving arrays of thousands of individual Mini LEDs on a substrate, thereby delivering impressive high resolution images with...

Equipment supplier Veeco reported its business performance of the second quarter of 2020 with revenues of US$ 98.6 million. The company also reported GAAP net loss of $ 8.3 million and Non-GAAP net income of $ 5.5 million. Veeco said it has been executing well during the pandemic and all of its production sites have been operating at or near normal capacity in the second quarter. Its Scientific and Industrial market continues to perform well driven by sales to data storage customers. Sales in LED Lighting Display & Compound Semiconductor took 16% of its reven...

Compound Photonics (CP) unveiled its IntelliPix™ Microdisplay Technology Platform for Micro LED featuring multiple video pipeline and system integration innovations addressing power optimization, latency, and bandwidth use with the aim to improve AR experience. (Image: Compound Photonics) CP focuses on Micro LED constant current technology platform with a MIPI interface that enables pixel-to-pixel uniformity in the emerging <5μm Micro LED display space for AR/MR near-eye applications. Given AR imagery, in general, does not fill the ...

A new study published by researchers at Tohoku University in Japan introduced a novel solution for realizing high speed light transmission via deep UV (DUV) LEDs. The results were published in Applied Physics Letters on July 22, 2020. The research team highlighted two major issues of using LEDs as light source for wireless communication. One thing is that faster modulation requires smaller device size but smaller LEDs usually lack power. Another issue is that both visible and infrared optical wireless communications can have significant solar interference. To av...

Improving performance of LEDs is a continuous task for researchers. A team consisting of researchers of Imperial College London introduced a method of embedding tailored meta-grid of nanoparticles to LEDs to enhance their light output and lifetime. (Image: Debabrata Sikdar, John B. Pendry, and Alexei A. Kornyshev) The method was published in Light Science & Application in July by Dr. Debabrata Sikdar, Prof. Sir John B. Pendry and Prof. Alexei Kornyshev from Imperial College London. They reported an alternative route for improving light extrac...

VueReal announced that its multi device cartridge structure enables faster population of a display with higher yield and higher alignment accuracy. Most applications such as displays require more than one sub pixels with different devices per sub pixels. In case of Micro LED display, red, green, and blue Micro LEDs are required for each pixel. Moreover, most of these devices are fabricated in different environments using different material sets for higher performance. The common approach is to transfer each device independently to a large substrate. For a 4K MicroLED d...

Like several other international event, Display Week 2020 hosted by the Society for Information Display (SID) turned virtual this year and is taking place online from August 3 to 7, 2020. The virtual version of Display Week still features keynote speeches delivered by industry leaders including IBM, NVIDIA, Merch and AUO who oversee diverse technologies and product innovation within their enterprises. Other highlights addressing innovative display technologies such as Micro LED, Mini LED, OLED, foldable displays and new material are presented by...

Taiwanese panel manufacturer AUO held its investor conference yesterday and announced financial results of 2Q20. Driven by “Stay-at-home” economy, the company reported strong demand for display applications and expects the growth momentum to continue in the second half of the year. For 2Q20, AUO posted consolidated revenues of NTD 63.50 billion (US$ 2.16 million), up by 18.3% QoQ. Gross margin came to 2.7%. In the second quarter of 2020, large-sized panel shipments totaled around 30.71 million units, hiked by 37.0% QoQ. Shipments of small-and-medium-s...

Some novel applications of large size outdoor LED displays are happening now. Outdoor LED displays are not merely seen as digital billboards on the buildings or by the highway. Actually, it is very popular to use LED displays as backdrops for commercial events such as movie premiere, live concerts, and more. However, during the coronavirus pandemic, drive-in cinemas become a premier entertainment selection that can remain social distancing. Recently, more and more drive-in cinemas reopen across the world. There are LED display and projection solutions for drive-in cinema...

Singapore based equipment supplier K&S announced financial results of its fiscal 3Q20 ended June 27, 2020. The company posted revenue of US$ 150.5 million which grown by 18.4% YoY. For the third fiscal quarter of 2020, K&S reported a gross profit of US$ 69.4 million and a gross margin of 46.1%. On the non-GAAP base, the company’s net income grew by 258.3% YoY to 12.9 million. The increased profit and revenue were boosted by the company’s recently mass produced Pixalux, which was designed to meet the high speed transfer needs in Mini LED...

Osram announced the financial results of its fiscal 3Q20. The German company said that the performance was better than expected compared to the main sales markets. For Osram’s FY 3Q20, its revenue on a comparable basis fell by 29.4% YoY to EUR 606 million (US$ 711.95 million) due to the impact of the Coronavirus crisis. EBITDA before special items was well above expectations with negative EUR 27 million (US$ 31.75 million). Osram’s Automotive business unit was impacted the most with on-year sales dropped by 35.7% to EUR 282 million (US$ ...

Samsung unveiled the financial results for the second quarter of 2020 with consolidate revenues of KRW 52.97 trillion (US$ 44.49 billion) and operating profits of KRW 8.15 trillion (US$ 6.85 billion). (Image: Samsung) Even as the spread of COVID-19 caused closures and slowdowns at stores and production sites around the world, Samsung has managed minimize the impact of the pandemic by strengthening online sales channels and optimizing costs. Quarterly operating profit rose 26% comparing to the previous quarter and grew 23% by year, thanks to firm demand for memor...

Lucid Motors announced its DreamDrive, an ADAS system combining sensing solutions including LiDARS which will be equipped with Lucid Air revealing on September 9, 2020. Lucid Air that will be delivered in early 2021 is expected to be the first to market with the combination of a driver monitoring system and a sensor suite that includes high-resolution LIDAR as standard equipment. The DreamDrive technology suite supports 19 key safety, driving, and parking assist features that will be available on Lucid Air upon start of production, with another eight features e...

Germicidal LEDs have been wide deployed home appliances such as washing machine and air conditioners for disinfecting function, aiming to prevent the spread of disease especially at the time when COVID-19 still pose threats to the world. To address the disinfecting demands across the globe, Hyosung America, an ATM supplier, announced a disinfection kits for its products to help fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and to help ease consumers’ safety concerns with using ATMs. (Image: Hyosung America) Starting this fall, the company will equip the disinfect...

CES was one of the few events that had not been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. But not anymore. CES 2021 will be held online without any physical activities according to the announcement of the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) revealed on July 28, 2020. CES 2021 will be a digital event with all the product launches, keynotes and conferences moving online. Considering the ongoing threat of COVID-19, CTA believes that “it is not possible to safely convene tens of thousands of people in Las Vegas in early January 2021 to meet and do business...

The global supply chains of Mini LED backlight display have been unveiled one after another. After Samsung’s rumor of releasing Mini LED backlit TVs with chips supplied by Taiwan and China chip makers, LG Display is now said to provide panels for Dell. Korean media TheElec reported that LG Display has supplied panel for Dell’s 31.5-inch Mini LED backlit monitor for medical applications. The 31.5-inch display deployed more than 10,000 units of Mini LED to deliver advanced performance with high contrast ratio and brightness. The product was ...

Lighting Research Center (LRC) conducted a survey to investigate the viewpoint of people towards UV disinfection products. (Image: Pixabay) Demands for UV disinfection products hiked due to the present pandemic crisis. With increasing options for products and applications, many consumers and product specifiers have questions about the safety, effectiveness, and energy efficiency of these products. In order to address these concerns, the LRC is currently examining a range of UV disinfection technologies. The goal of this work is to provide information that will h...

LeddarTech announced that its LiDAR product Leddar Pixell is now adopted by COAST Autonomous in an autonomous delivery vehicle (ADV) at the Kinney County Railport (KCRP) near Brackettville, Texas. KCRP is one of several railyards operated by Harbor Rail Services Company of California. COAST Autonomous selected LeddarTech’s Leddar Pixell Cocoon LiDAR with its 360-degree vehicle coverage as a supplier for this project. The COAST Autonomous electric ADVs operate CO2 emission-free and enable Harbor Rail to operate and mov...

Mini LED backlight products are expect to bring a revolution to the display market with driving momentum from leading brands including Apple and Samsung. The two companies are reportedly launching Mini LED backlight tablets and TVs in the coming months or next year, which will bring up demands for Mini LED chips. LED chips suppliers from Taiwan and China are seeing a surging demands for Mini LED chips in the second half of 2020. Taiwan-based Epistar has been preparing its Mini LED capacity for Apple and will be ready to begin shipment in September. E...

The Franco-German satellite MERLIN is due to be launched into space in 2025 to measure the methane concentration in the Earth's atmosphere - a milestone in climate research. Important components of the LiDAR measurement system come from the Ferdinand-Braun-Institut in Berlin, which has now delivered the required laser diode benches to the project partner. The MERLIN mission aims to better understand the effect of the greenhouse gas methane on global warming. A radar-like laser system on the satellite measures natural and anthropogenic methane emissions: The...

In the first half of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has heavily impacted the world as well as the technology industry with various interruptions occurred in the supply chain. In April, LEDinside covered how Micro LED technology could still have a chance to grow despite the COVID-19 impacts on the industry. And now, we would like to share the breakthroughs of Micro LED unveiled during the first half of the year proving that developments of the technology have not stopped by the pandemic. Micro LED Wafer and Chip Improvements Researchers have been working on...

LG Electronics has added the category of Micro LED to its Business Solution website with its Micro LED display product available for inquiry. The Micro LED TV, named LSAB009 by the company, is a 163-inch 4K screen with a pixel pitch of 0.9mm based on COB technology. (Image: LG) The Micro LED TV of LG delivers a peak brightness of 1,200 nits and typical brightness of 600 nits. The peak contrast ratio achieves 100,000:1 and the max ratio 50,000:1. LG has yet announced the release date of the product but some source said it would start shipping i...

Velodyne Lidar announced a three year sales agreement with PARIFEX, a traffic management and speed measurement systems provider. Based on the agreement, PARIFEX will use Velodyne’s LiDAR sensors in its traffic monitoring solutions which can help reduce road accident rates and enhance roadway safety. (Image: Velodyne Lidar/PARIFEX) PARIFEX equips its NANO-CAM and NOMAD solutions with Velodyne Puck sensors for real-time tracking of static and moving objects including vehicles, pedestrians and bicyclists, while preserving anonymit...

LiDAR sensor and technology builders Cepton and Luminar recently announced their expansion plans respectively, aiming to scale the market as well as to speed up technology development. Cepton Technologies, who began partnership with Japan-based Koito, appointed industry veteran Andrew Klaus as country manager for Japan, marking its continued expansion into the Japanese and Asian markets. Klaus’ role will initially focus on building Cepton’s market share in Japan, where the company has experienced growing demand for its high-performance LiDAR solution...

Signify announced the company’s 2020 second quarter results with sales of EUR 1.469 billion (US$ 1.7 billion). Comparable sales decreased by 22.5% due to the COVID-19 impact. However, the company still managed to maintain a profitable adjusted EBITA margin of 9%. (Image: Signify) The company also reported a net income of EUR 81 million (US$ 94.03 million) which increased by 61.5% YoY as a result of lower restructuring costs and one-time non-cash tax benefits from changes in the organizational structure. LED-based sales accounted for 80% of total ...

Semiconductor equipment provider AIXTRON published its financial results of the first half and the second quarter of 2020. The company said that it remains on track in the period despite the COVID-19 crisis. For 1H20, AIXTRON said it has received order volumes of EUR 138.4 million (US$ 160.6 million), which achieved an on-year growth of 41%. The order intake of 2Q20 came to EUR 69.6 million (US$ 80.76 million), up by 55% comparing to the same period in 2019. The main drivers of the growing customer demand for deposition equipment are the growing mar...

Samsung is reportedly preparing the launch of Mini LED backlit TVs in 2021 and the increasing demands of Mini LED chips will be supplied by Taiwan and China companies, reported TechNews, a Taiwan-based online media. (Image: Samsung) By quitting the production of LCD display, the Korean giant plans to boost its high end TV products shipment based on diverse display technologies, aiming to exit the low price competition. Apart from the scheduled “The Wall” TV launch in the market of North America and Europe, Samsung might also release new TV...