A one year program to evaluate the use of LED outdoor street lights has been launched by the town of Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Duke Energy Carolinas.

A DOE researcher has achieved a big progress in his research on organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) by partly solving the problem of weak blue diode in white OLED lights.

Sarnoff Corp. has launched a new company to focus on the thriving LED lighting market. Lightscape Materials Inc., which is the name of the new venture, has received $3 million in Series A funding from Wisepower Co. Ltd. and Foosung HDS Co. Ltd with the two companies joining Itochu Corp. which is an early stage investor and distributor in Asia for Lightscape Materials.

Diodes Incorporated, a leading global provider of semiconductor products, has recently released a family of LED driver ICs which require the support of only four components and operate at switching frequencies up to 600kHZ, which makes possible the use of fewer and smaller external components to be required by driver circuits.

Everlight signed a non-exclusive cross-license agreement with OSRAM GmbH (“OSRAM”), providing the companies (including wholly-owned affiliates) with access in certain areas to each other’s patented LED technology.

A new LED lighting system targeted for commercial facilities has recently been developed by Daiwa House Industry Co. Ltd. in collaboration with Nabesho Co. Ltd. and Kyocera Corp.

Seoul Semiconductor Co. will be a supplier of 300 thousand pieces of LED for “LED Farming Demonstration Project” which is organized by Ministry of Economy, Trade & Industry of Japan with the purpose to demonstrate the application of LED in farming lighting.

According to survey by LEDinside, the total Feb 2009 revenue of listed Taiwan LED suppliers reached NTD 3.74billion, up 33% than Jan 2009 (YoY-25%), with the revenue of LED chip manufacturers at NTD 1.496 billion, up 46% and that of LED packaging manufacturers improved by 25% at NTD 2.243 billion comparing to January.

Samsung Electronics Co. has launched today its first LED TV products in global markets. The new line of LED flat panel TVs include Series 8000, 7000 and 6000, coming from 32-inch to 55-inch in sizes. With LEDs as the primary light source, the new TVs feature ultra-high contrast ratios compared to the traditional TVs using Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamps. And the motion blur and image judder problems typically affecting LCD TVs have also been substantially reduced in the new LED TVs, said the company.

As major cities worldwide has initiated green lighting by replacing local street lights with LED light source for the benefit of energy-saving, Edison Opto has introduced 27W and 100W modules tailored for street lighting application. The 27W street lighting module consists of 24 high power Edixeon LEDs, each equipped with a proprietary elliptical secondary lens, achieving a luminous efficacy up to 83lm/W. The LEDs are mounted on a metal core PCB (121x135mm) for easy assembly.

LED flashlight technology has recently for the first time been added to a wristwatch as in the new digital watch product recently released by iBEAM. New features and applications have been essential factors for watch brands to win the market. So iBEAM has made sure to have a hit with consumers and retailers with this new adoption of LED flashlight to its new product.

LED streetlights are to illuminate the dark in a most crime-ridden block in the city of San Francisco. And the Mayor Gavin Newsom will visit the section today to test the energy-saving light source by lighting four street lights using his iPhone. LED street lights consume much less power than traditional streetlights. And the lights with computer chips are networked over power lines thus can be shut off when no one is around. Besides, LED lights require far less maintenance and are tough to break. But these are not the most important for this weirdest section in the city.

Endicott Research Group (ERG), Inc., has created a European office, naming Roland Knuchel as European Sales Manager. ERG, based in Endicott, NY, is the leading manufacturer of DC-AC inverters and LED Drivers for powering LCD backlights.

A video of sheep equipped with LED lights released by Samsung last week to promote its new LED TV range has attracted more than 2 million viewers on YouTube in less than one week.

Diguang Electronics, a LED and CCFL backlight supplier of China, has launched its new range of 19" ultrathin LED monitors.                                    

On the St. Louis Regional FIRST Robotics Competition held in Missouri, USA on Saturday, the robots from Baxter Bomb Squad not only had beaten the rival in the matches, but also received the Rockwell Innovation in Controls Award for its camera-tracking LED system. This camera-tracking LED system was implemented in the Baxter Bomb robots to track the goals of robots in the opposite team. And the proximity of their robot to the goals was displayed in red, blue and green LEDs, said Steve Hatch, one of the team's sponsors.

Combining creative thinking and proactive actions, NeoPac Opto once again pushed output brightness with single-packaged, multi-chip point-light-source LEDs light engine to the new era at over 1,500 lumen maintenance.

Two new PhlatLight LED modules for entertainment and architectural uses are introduced by Luminus Devices Inc. in Billerica, USA. And the products has been planned to enter the markets from 2H09. Claimed as the first multi-color LEDs by the company with individually controllable color channels, the new modules based on PhlatLight (Photonic Lattice) LED large-chip architecture can produce over 2500 lumen of total light output from a optical area of merely 6mm x 8mm.

A polarization-matched LED co-developed by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Samsung Electro-Mechanics has exhibited a 20% increase in light output and a 25% increase in wall-plug efficiency. And smart LEDs with the function of emitting light and handling date is in vision in the future, according to Professor Fred Schubert, the leader of the project.

Wyked Illuzionz, a specialized LED Lighting provider for Motorcycles, will attend the Winchester Motorcycle Expo IV held March 28 and 29 to install and sell LED lights on motorcycles as well as display its two motorcycle models with LED lights.

IST Lighting has added three new partners to its rapidly expanding strategic partner network to distribute its iDrive™ and other lighting products across mainland Europe and Hong Kong of China amongst other areas in the world.

The February revenue of LED suppliers of Taiwan which sell most products to China mainland has grown substantially due to the sudden demand surge in low-price IT products in that market.

Qisda Corp., a consumer electronics subsidiary company of the BenQ Group, has won the Red Dot Award of Germany, according to Hsiung Huei, the president and chief executive of the company. And this can be seen as a proof of the company’s more participation in the upscale LED lighting market. The Qisda LED lamps were awarded the Red Dot for the innovative designs and unique functions, according to Huei, and these lamps would be supplied to luxury restaurants and hotels in the third quarter at the earliest.

An estimated unencapsulated light-extraction efficiency of 73% has been reached by a photonic-crystal structured blue-emitting LED created by researchers of Philips Lumileds (San Jose, CA) and Philips Research(Eindhoven, The Netherlands).

Nicola Martin, a businesswoman who moved to New Zealand six years ago, wants to replace the country's existing 340,000 street lights, which are mostly high-pressure sodium lamps, with light emitting diode (LED) bulbs. Two years ago, Helen Clark, the prime minister of New Zealand, said public lighting was the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions from local councils.

Grote Industries, a leading manufacturer and marketer of vehicle lighting and safety systems, has disclosed its development of a new flexible LED strips product. With a thickness of merely 1mm and 98 percent material saved in the manufacture process, the LightForm can be twisted, bended and even cut into shape. It will also be self-adhesive to vehicles through the elimination of brackets, fasteners and drilling.

Philips Color Kinetics has been awarded for “Significant Achievement in Solid-State Lighting Research & Development” by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), which is recognition of its exceptional progress in the development of the highly efficient LED PAR lamp.  

The newest 12-volt LED headlamp product was introduced by Truck-Lite at the Mid-America Trucking Show which was declared to be the world’s first 7-in. round DOT-compliant LED headlamp for commercial applications.

Philips Lumileds has joined the California Lighting Technology Center(CLTC) as an affiliate member to co-develop market-ready Luxeon LED-based applications with luminaire manufacturers. These applications need to meet the energy efficiency and lighting quality levels of EnergyStar(r) and other regional and national guidelines.

Torraca, a small village of 1,200 inhabitants in Italy, is the first place in the world to be totally illuminated by LEDs with some 700 streetlights (each containing 54 LEDs) now lining its arteries. And this new source of light has begun to light up the night all around the world from Beijing's Bird's Nest Olympic Stadium to the Raleigh Convention Center's Shimmer Wall in North Carolina.