Global leading display producers are shifting the production focus from LCD display, cutting down manufacture facility or even quitting the business, majorly due to the fierce price competition and market transformation. The new display technologies, OLED, Mini LED are now competing to take over the role of leading display technology. Micro LED might also join the competition in the near future. (Image: Lextar) According to WitsView, a division of TrendForce, TV panel prices generally have been lower than the cash costs leading to business loss for global pane...

The South Korean equipment manufacturer Charm Engineering is extending its business towards Micro LED display and built partnership with Korea Photonics to develop related technologies. (Image: Pixabay) According to Charm Engineering, the company is expanding its display repairing business from OLED display to Micro LED display with its newly developed TFT array defective wiring repair equipment, reported ETnews, an online media in South Korea. The equipment provider also reported that it has signed a MOU with Korea Photonics Technology Institu...

KAIST research team has invented “transformative electronics systems” which can change shapes and stretch flexibly, enabling novel design for wearable products. The new study was published in Science Advance in November. According to KAIST, the transformative electronics consist of a special gallium metal structure, hermetically encapsulated and sealed within a soft silicone material, combined with electronics that are designed to be flexible and stretchable. The mechanical transformation of the electronic systems is specifically triggered by temperature change...

Kubos Semiconductors from the UK and the UK Compound Semiconductor Centre (CSC) announced that their partnership to commercialize cubic GaN epitaxy for the manufacture of high efficiency green and amber LEDs. Hexagonal GaN crystals have been widely used to fabricate blue LEDs, but achieving efficient operation in green devices is a problem. Large polarization fields in the active regions of these longer-wavelength structures reduce radiative recombination rates and limit LED efficiency. Targeting the issue, Kubos Semiconductors develops process based on gr...

Smart wearables including watches, glasses, headphones and others are considered rising stars in the consumer market with more and more big names launching products combining different functions for medical use, health care, entertainment and more. According to Trendforce, the global shipments of smart watches in 2019 are estimated to reach 62.63 million units. The requirements of wearable products include small size, light weight, low power consumption and environmental resistance. The progressing Micro LED technologies thus become critical for the development of smart wearables...

Samsung reported that two of the company’s research fellows have proved the potential of QLEDs for commercial purposes in a new study, which was published in ‘Nature’ on November 27, 2019. The research team managed to hugely improve quantum efficiency, as well as extend the lifetime of the QLED element by improving the structure of quantum dots. With the thick shell structure proposed by the research team, oxidation of the core and energy leak could be prevented. The study concluded that the method had improved quantum efficiency by 21.4% and increased the ...

Apple’s autonomous vehicle development, also known as “Project Titan,” seems to go on progressing with more and more related patents published. Patently Apple and appleinsider both covered that the company has won new patents of automotive applications. One of the new Apple patents is titled “Systems with Synchronized Windows,” describing a LCD integrated car window with adjustable transparency which enhance privacy. Apple noted in the patent that the vehicle window would include a light modulator layer such as a liquid crystal layer with polari...

Japan Display (JDI) announced the development of a Micro LED display. The prototype Micro LED display will be presented at “FINTECH JAPAN 2019,” which is taking place in Makuhari Messe from December 4 to 6, 2019. The 1.6-inch Micro LED display of JDI is based on LTPS backplane developed by the company and Micro LED chips from glō, a Micro LED technology provider. The display achieves a resolution of 265 ppi with a pixel number of 300*300. (Image: JDI) JDI also noted that the Micro LED display has a wide viewin...

Seoul Semiconductor Co., Ltd. (KOSDAQ 046890), a leading global innovator of LED products and technology, announced that it will auction its radio frequency (RF) semiconductor patent portfolio and its high power LED package patent portfolio. In the first auction, Seoul Semiconductor is seeking the top bidder for 98 patent assets related to power amplifiers and gallium nitride (GaN) RF semiconductors, including 55 U.S. patents. Three of the patents are licensed to the U.S. Air Force or the U.S. Army, confirming the value of the portfolio. This RF pate...

Signify introduced an innovative way to product lighting products: 3D print them! The company unveiled its facilities to 3D print light shades and fittings (luminaires) in the Netherlands and announced its plan to establish more 3D printing factories in the US, India and Indonesia. (Supermarket using 3D printed luminaires; image: Signify) By 3D printing luminaires, Signify uses a 100% recyclable polycarbonate material, allowing lighting products to be bespoke designed or tailored to customer’s exact needs and recycled at the end of their life, supporting a circula...

Silvair is providing Bluetooth mesh solutions for Osram’s lighting control system through its new new partnership. Osram’s HubSense® is designed to enable easy and time-efficient retrofitting of existing lighting installations into flexible wireless control systems based on the globally interoperable Bluetooth mesh standard. The system also allows quick and effortless modification of settings and lighting arrangement without bearing the costs of recommissioning. (Image: Silvair/Osram) With Silvair as its Technology Partner, OSRAM gains access to th...

Despite that Tesla’s founder Elon Musk said that “Anyone relying on LiDAR is doomed,” the technology using lighting to detect, range, and imaging targeted areas and objects is believed to be critical for autonomous driving technology development. LiDAR uses infrared LED or laser light to deliver light pause and receive the reflected light for measuring distances of objects and constructing the surrounding environment. Advantages of LiDAR include high accuracy, high resolution, and long detecting distance. (Image: Luminar) LiDAR can be d...

In the list of CES 2020 Innovation Award Honoree, several LiDAR products were named including Cube by Blickfeld, Helius Smart Lidar System by Cepton, Leddar Pixell by LeddarTech and RS-LiDAR-M1 by RoboSense. Blickfeld, LeddarTech and RoboSense were listed in the category of “Vehicle Intelligence & Transportation,” while Cepton was named in two categories, “Smart Cities,” and “Tech for a Better World.” Blickfeld Cube is a solid-state LiDAR targeting the mass market, according to Blickfeld, the Germ...

Last week the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published 59 patents of Apple including one patent named “Lighting Systems of Vehicle Seats,” which is believed to be part of Apple’s autonomous vehicle project “Project Titan,” according to the report of Patently Apple. Apple’s new patent of vehicle lighting systems noted that the lighting system can be integrated into a seat, door panel, dashboard, or other interior portions of a vehicle. These interior parts of car would be illuminated with the light systems for providing icons, text, a...

STMicroelectronics (ST) announced its collaborative efforts with Audi to conceive, design, industrialize, manufacture, and deliver the next generation of innovative automotive exterior OLED lighting. The first demonstration of this effort was the showing of next-generation digital OLED technology presented by Audi at the 2019 International Symposium on Automotive Lighting (ISAL). The parties target to release this new technology in future Audi car models. (Image: ST/Audi) The current cooperation expands the relationship and builds on Audi’s creativ...

Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), Taiwan's largest and leading high-tech applied research institutions, won two CES 2020 Innovation Awards, including its PECOLA (Personal Companion for Older People Living Alone) in the Smart Home category and iStimUweaR in Wearable Technologies. ITRI President Edwin Liu pointed out that ITRI’s PECOLA robot is able to identify and analyze living conditions for seniors, and employs a video-based fall detection technology, which will send notification for assistance when a person take...

The European Union have set up higher standards of food safety and food quality. In order to meet the requirements especially in the dairy industry, researchers in the EU are working on developing a new optoplasmonic sensor which enable fast, on-site milk quality analysis. In the EU-funded project MOLOKO (Multiplex phOtonic sensor for pLasmonic-based Online detection of contaminants in milK), Fraunhofer researchers have teamed up with partners from seven countries to develop a fast and inexpensive test for identifying quality factors in milk. In the five-minute te...

Seoul Semiconductor announced that its SunLike Series natural spectrum LEDs have been adopted for lighting brand “REMEZ” by RemiLicht GmbH for the lighting market in Russia. The LED light bulbs feature a human-centric lighting design enabled by the SunLike Series LEDs. The SunLike Series LEDs adopted by RemiLicht GmbH for LED light bulb used for residential lighting and desk lamp achieved color temperatures of warm white (3000K) and cold white (5700K), optimized to natural light spectra by reaching lower blue light peak similar to su...

Cree reported its strategic partnership with German’s ZF Friedrichshafen for highly efficient electric drivelines development. With this strategic partnership, ZF and Cree are intensifying their existing cooperation. “We're delighted that we're building on our cooperation with Cree using their Wolfspeed silicon carbide technology and are absolutely convinced that combining our strengths will further improve efficiency and competitive edge for our components and systems,” said Jörg Grotendorst, Head of the ZF E-Mobility Division. (Ima...

UV LED technology has come closer to our daily life for diminishing bacteria and enhancing hygiene. One way to apply the technology could be integrating UV LEDs with public door handles. Two graduate students of the Chinese University in Hong Kong designed the self-sanitizing door handle and was selected as the top 20 in the James Dyson Award in 2019. Sum Ming Wong and Kin Pong Li, the inventors of the self-sanitizing door handle, were inspired by the SARS outbreak in 2003 when the infection spread out via contact. The door handle was created to prevent conta...

A Chinese research team recently develop a stretchable light-emitting devices which delivers information and can be attached to human skin and other surfaces. The device is like a temporary tattoo and can be operated at low voltage so it does not cause harm to users. Published in ACS Materials Letter in October 2019, the results from researchers at Nanjing University in China demonstrated stretchable light-emitting devices called alternating-current electroluminescent (ACEL) displays. The device has a sandwiched structure with an electroluminescent layer made of light-em...

At the Micro LED product launch, Konka invited Shuiji Nakamura, the Nobel winner in 2014, to share his ideas about Micro LED displays and the technology progress of his laboratory. According to Nakamura, Micro LED outpaces OLED in all the features including brightness, contrast, durability and more, however, the only challenge for Micro LED is production cost. And in order to reduce cost, the miniaturize process of LED might lead to efficiency degrease. Currently the research team has developed a 10μm Micro LED chip which is able to achieve 42% EO...

Konka Group from China hold a product launch event on October 31 and introduced its latest Micro LED display products including a 118-inch 4K TV, a 117-inch 6K TV and a 236-inch 8K TV under the brand name “APHAEA.” Konka called its Micro LED TV product “Smart Wall,” aiming to challenge Samsung’s “The Wall.” The Micro LED displays of Konka are also modular display that can be customized into different shapes and sizes. The Smart Wall TVs use more than 100 million Micro LED chips to reach a brigh...

Apple’s AR glasses have become even more materialized as Bloomberg reported on October 21 that the iPhone maker is likely to introduce AR headset which synchronize the new 5G upgraded iPhone in 2020. According to Bloomberg, the glasses will wirelessly connected with iPhone to show information over users’ field of vision, displaying texts, emails, maps or even games. Apple was also said to include an App Store with the headset. (Image: the United States Patent and Trademark Office) The Apple’s AR glasses are expected to have holographic dis...

A research team of The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) developed a new light-emitting material which combines quantum dot with a polymer medium filled with popcorn-like air bag. The new material, compared to conventional pure quantum dot films, perform 21 times better luminous intensity and 45% better durability. (Image: KAIST) The study was published online in September on Nano Letters, titles “Order-of-Magnitude, Broadband-Enhanced Light Emission from Quantum Dots Assembled in Multiscale Phase-Separated Block Copol...

As display technology continues to progress, worldwide big names have launched innovative displays that the resolution has evolved from full HD to 4K. Nevertheless, without high contrast, the refined display performance of high resolution would not be fully presented. High contrast intensifies the brightness and darkness of images and videos on TVs and gaming monitors and enables AR wearables or automotive displays to deliver clear picture under sunlight. Thus, the demands for high contrast display keep rising. LEDs, with its self-emitting feature, can be adopted to various ...

Hyundai Mobis announced its partnership with Velodyne Lidar for mass-producing level 3 autonomous driving LiDAR system. Hyundai Mobis will also invest US$50 million in Velodyne to reinforce business cooperation in LiDAR commercialization. (Image: Hyundai Mobis) The two companies will collaborate on new LiDAR system supply by integrating Velodyne’s latest LiDAR sensors with Hyundai Mobis’ cognitive software. Hyundai Mobis’ cognitive software will process the outside vehicle environment data gathered by LiDAR sensors which means tha...

People become more and more aware of how lighting can affect human well-being and are paying attention to the quality of lighting. For enhancing light quality, researchers found out people have different perception of light sources depending on their age and highlighted the importance of taking age factor into consideration when designing white LED lighting. A study published in The Optical Society (OSA) journal Optics Express investigated the perception variability related to short-wavelength effects and confirmed that the perception of white LEDs is affected by the view...

Chemistry company BASF announced that it has signed a distribution agreement with EMDE Development of Light (EMDE), a Germany-based innovative lighting design company. Under the agreement, EMDE will distribute BASF’s innovative LED Sunvue® lighting products in Europe. In addition, the lighting company will adopt BASF’s color conversion technology to design new lighting products and solutions. (Image: BASF) BASF’s proprietary Sunvue technology is developed to optimize blue LED light for different applications. The te...

Google launched its latest smart phones Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL on October 15, featuring advanced camera functions, motion sensing and face unlock. The new features of Pixel 4 are supported by sensing technology specialists including Infineon and ams. (Image: Google) Google created Motion Sense to detect users hand motions based on its technology from Project Soli. The technology allows user operate the device simply by swiping or waving hands in front of it Instead of touching or holding the phone. This function was achieved thanks to Infineon’s radar chip. T...