Merck, a leading company for innovative, top-quality high-tech products in healthcare, life science and performance materials, laid the cornerstone for a new OLED materials production plant in Darmstadt today. Production of high-purity OLED materials for use in state-of-the-art displays and lighting systems is scheduled to start in the approximately 2,000 square meter building in July 2016. With the investment, which amounts to around EUR 30 million (US$ 33.78 million), Merck is strengthening its position in the OLED business. Merck aims to be a leading supplier of OLED materials by 2018. The company wishes to make use of its experience in the liquid crystals business, where it is the global leader.

Transphorm, an early stage semiconductor company focused on redefining power conversion, today announced a US $70 million investment round led by global investment firm KKR. KKR’s investment follows initial rounds of funding led by funds affiliated with Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, Foundation Capital, Google Ventures, Soros Quantum Strategic Partners, INCJ, Fujitsu, Transphorm will use this funding to support its growth, product innovation and expansion.

How do you make skydiving even more thriling? Do it at night, toss in some wingsuits equipped with LED lights and do it all choreographed to the beats of drum and bass duo Camo & Krooked. The result? A project entitled "GRAVITAS."

In December 2012, following a US $135 million renovation that united three disparate buildings into one seamless museum, the Yale University Art Gallery opened to the public.  Steven Hefferan of Hefferan Partnership Lighting Design (Boulder, Colo.) managed the lighting for 70,000 square feet of gallery space, and the illumination for more than 4,000 works of art in the galleries.

Rubicon Technology, a leading provider of sapphire substrates and products to the LED, semiconductor and optical markets,announced it will exhibit its high-quality optical sapphire, including the largest sapphire window ever produced, at the LASER World of PHOTONICS trade show from June 22-25 at the Munich Trade Fair Center. Rubicon will showcase its line of sapphire products in booth B1.418.

At the New York Blue Light Symposium press conference, the Blue Light Society will bring together renowned ophthalmologists, sleep specialists and researchers from the U.S. and abroad to discuss the latest studies on the effects of natural blue light and blue light emitted from LED devices on the human body.  

Everlight Electronics, a leading player in the global LED and optoelectronics industry, will exhibit the complete range of LED products like lighting, backlight, flash, signage and infrared LED at the LED EXPO KOREA 2015, including new products in this quarter. EVERLIGHT expects to meet one-stop demand for our customers based on the complete product combination.

CSP technology will lead the emergence of new LED package material demands, said Kaz Maruyama, Global Marketing Director, Dow Corning Lighting Solutions at LEDforum 2015 Guangzhou, which took place earlier this month at China Import and Export Fair Pazhou Complex in Guangzhou, China.

A source within Egypt’s Electricity Ministry has disclosed plans of distributing 1.7 million LED bulbs in the next four months, reported The Cairo Post.

Aledia, a developer and manufacturer of next-generation 3D LEDs based on its Gallium-Nitride-on-Silicon platform, announced today the closing of its Series B financing round and the execution of development and supply contracts with major LED buyers. 

EarthTronics offers a full line of Energy Star rated LED Recessed Retrofit downlights in 4- and 6-inch diameters, providing 550 to 1200 lumens for architectural/décor lighting applications. The energy efficient LED Recessed Retrofit downlights easily replace popular, less proficient 4-, 5- and 6-inch aperture fixtures and produce a full flood light with a 90° beam angle. They are ideal for use in medical and long-term care facilities, hotels, resorts and restaurants as well as light commercial properties.

Epistar keeps building innovating products and technologies and continues to bolster its global IP position. In addition, Epistar strives to strengthen the value of its Co-activation Service.

Direct View lighting is a growing application space as architectural building materials are shifting more and more to glass and steel, requiring fixtures that integrate directly into the façade structures and cladding elements.

Over the past 2 years, a new type of LED packaging often referred to as “filament” LEDs has been gaining popularity fast. These LED packages enable the manufacturing of incandescent style LED bulbs, combining the traditional look and feel of the well-known incandescent bulbs with the user benefits of LED lighting such as extended life and energy savings. These types of lamps are expected to take the market by storm as mass retailers all over the world will be introducing these lamps in the coming lighting season.  LED Filaments are usually construc...

LEDinside team would like to wish everyone in advance a Happy Dragon Boat Festival! We will be on holiday tomorrow, so apologies if there are no further article updates this week.

Adoption of LED automotive lights has grown over recent years, but traditional halogen and Xenon HID lights still dominate the headlight market, said the company CEO Pierre-Yves Lesaicherre during an exclusive interview with LEDinside at Guangzhou International Lighting Exhibition (GILE), China from June 9-12, 2015.

For manufacturers to succeed in the LED market, using standardized components and increasing LED product efficacy and C/P ratio is important in ensuring products can meet client demands, said Andy Man, Vice President, Asia, Bridgelux at LEDforum 2015 in Guangzhou, China. Main organizers of the forum that took place on June 11, 2015 include LEDinside, CNLEDw.com, and Guangzhou Guangya Messe Frankfurt.

Top Taiwanese LED chip manufacturer Epistar has been aggressive in its patent strategies, and has acquired key LED filament bulb patents to build up its core advantages, reported Liberty Times recently.

A few years ago it became clear that the LED signage industry needed a change. Fundamental shifts in LED technology, plus continual breakthroughs in software and hardware, and new innovations in competitive digital screen technologies, will force the LED sign manufacturer to adapt or die.

Lunera® Lighting, a leader in lighting innovations accelerating the transformation to advanced LED technology, will be featuring the Susan Lampand Lucy Lamp high-intensity discharge (HID) plug-and-play LED replacement lamps in Booth# 944 at BOMA International's Every Building Conference & Expo at the Los Angeles Convention Center, June 28 - 30, 2015.

Osram is making further progress regarding its realignment. In an extraordinary meeting, the supervisory board of OSRAM Licht AG approved the carve-out of the general lighting lamps business. As an independent entity, the business will be able to operate more freely on the market and realize strategic options, such as partnerships, more easily. Jes Munk Hansen, until now CEO of the Americas region, will lead the lamps business in the future. "Today's supervisory board decision lays the foundation for our strategic orientation toward growth, innovation and technology leadership," said Olaf Berlien, Chief Executive Officer of OSRAM Licht AG.

DEUTZ-FAHR in collaboration with HELLA has developed an industry-first LED light package for its award-winning line of 7 Series tractors.

San Jose-based LED chip manufacturer Lumileds has continued to thrive in the increasingly harsh cutthroat pricing LED market environment, by focusing on its LED technology development, introducing more cost effective CSP technology, and refining its mid-power and CoB market strategy, said the company CEO Pierre-Yves Lesaicherre during an exclusive interview with LEDinside at Guangzhou International Lighting Exhibition (GILE), China from June 9-12, 2015.

Led by Young Duck Kim, a postdoctoral research scientist in James Hone’s group at Columbia Engineering, a team of scientists from Columbia, Seoul National University (SNU), and Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS) reported today that they have demonstrated—for the first time—an on-chip visible light source using graphene, an atomically thin and perfectly crystalline form of carbon, as a filament. They attached small strips of graphene to metal electrodes, suspended the strips above the substrate, and passed a current through the filaments to cause them to heat up. The study, “Bright Visible Light Emission from Graphene,” is published in the Advance Online Publication (AOP) on Nature Nanotechnology's website on June 15.

Pixelligent Technologies, producer of PixClear®, the leading producer of nanocrystal dispersions for demanding applications in LED lighting, OLED Lighting, and Optical Coatings and Films markets, announced today that it closed US $3.4 million in new funding. The funds will be used to support accelerating customer growth throughout the world and to increase its manufacturing capacity to 40+ tons per year starting in 2016.

Zhaga has published the latest editions of Book 1 and Book 7, two of the approved Zhaga specifications.

Cree announces the Connected Cree® LED Bulb’s compatibility with market leader in home automation, SmartThings, which is part of the Samsung Global Innovation Center. The news comes just four months after the Connected Cree LED Bulb’s inaugural launch and reinforces its position as the most compatible connected LED bulb on the market.

Seaborough Research BV, one of the R&D companies of the Seaborough Group, introduces the world’s first, universally interchangeable, LED tube solution to retrofit legacy fluorescent TL lamps. The revolutionary oneTLed electronic circuittechnologyprovides compatibility with every type of driver, electronic or magnetic, and can be incorporated in all linear LED products. The oneTLed solves all the retrofit incompatibility problems found with LED tubes currently on the market, which are sometimes even unsafe to use with drivers found in existing luminaires. Notably the oneTLed solution offers a payback well within one year. 

Stephanie Cohn from Philips Color Kinetics interviews Etta Dannemann about her thoughts on the company’s Lighting Designer in Residence Program.

The more than two million visitors who travel to Mount Rushmore National Memorial each year will now enjoy an enhanced night time viewing experience, thanks to an innovative new lighting system with an LED light source that was recently installed at the memorial. The new system, custom designed and manufactured by Musco, will result in substantially less light pollution, while dramatically improving the lighting at the national memorial and saving energy.