OLED not ready for Prime Time?

One of the cutting-edge flatscreen display technologies that has generated considerable interest is OLED, or organic light emitting diode technology. This technology has been used for some time for small displays such as cell phones and automobile instrument panels. OLED technology has some significant advantages that make it attractive as a television display, but there are some significant disadvantages as well.

Cypress Extends Lighting Portfolio

Cypress Semiconductor Corp introduced new AC-DC digital power controllers for LED lighting. The CY8CLEDAC01/02 controllers offer a cost-effective solution for both non-dimmable and dimmable LED lighting, delivering high efficiency while meeting EnergyStar requirements. They provide automatic dimmer detection, so they work with the majority of the existing installed base of wall dimmers, providing dimming down to 2% with no flicker.
The new AC-DC controllers offer primary-side sensing with tight LED current regulation, eliminating the need for opto-isolation and other secondary-side control circuitry. This technique minimizes component count to reduce board space, power consumption, and overall BOM costs compared to other isolated solutions. The new controllers also feature circuit protection not normally available with other primary-side control solutions. The built-in protection features include over-voltage protection (OVP), output short circuit protection (OSCP), peak current limit protection (PCLP), current-sense resistor short protection (CSSP), and over-temperature protection (OTP). Reference designs for both the CY8CLEDAC01 and CY8CLEDAC02, including all schematics, BOM, gerber files, and documentation to create a power supply for a fully functional LED retrofit bulb, are available at www.cypress.com/go/acdc.
The new AC-DC controllers expand Cypress' lighting portfolio to effectively cover LED retrofit bulbs. They complement the PowerPSoC family of embedded power controllers, the industry's first single-chip solution for both controlling and driving high-power LEDs. Together, the AC-DC family and Cypress's PowerPSoC family cover a wide range of LED applications, from LED retrofit bulbs to high-end LED luminaires that require a variety of functions (communications, diagnostics, color-changing, etc). Cypress will demonstrate the AC-DC controllers, the PowerPSoC solution and its newly announced Powerline Communication solution at the Light+Building exhibition from April 11-16 in Hall 4, Stand E15 at the Frankfurt Fair and Exhibition Center in Frankfurt, Germany.

Cree LEDs Used in Lighthouse Technologies' HD Video Screens

Cree announced that its high brightness LEDs are used in Lighthouse Technologies' high definition video screens installed this season in the American Airlines Center, the Dallas home to both the NBA's Mavericks and NHL's Stars. Cree said its 3-in-1 high-brightness LEDs are delivering crystal-clear, high definition images to fans throughout the arena. According to officials, in addition to hosting thousands of NBA and NHL fans, the American Airlines Center also features numerous concerts and live entertainment throughout the year. Opened nearly 10 years ago and seating up to 20,000, the installation of 25 Lighthouse LED video screens is part of a technological renovation project at the arena. This includes the first 1080x1920 high-definition video screen in any NBA or NHL facility. Overall, the new digital screens will increase video visibility throughout the facility, providing spectators with dramatic instant replays, scoring information and dynamic ad content.

Bulbrite Introduces Energy Efficient TURBO LEDs

Offering energy efficiency at a higher level of performance, Bulbrite is introducing a new generation of Turbo LEDs to its extensive line of LED light sources. This new generation of LEDs features innovative heat sink technology that eliminates the need for large, aluminum heat sinks and clunky housings. Bulbrite LEDs include an innovative cooling system featuring pure anodized aluminum thermal fins that are 0.0236 inches thick and riveted to the body without glue. Highlighted with a revolutionary design for high performance, Turbo LEDs are engineered with a low junction temperature of 65 degrees C for optimal thermal conductivity to increase LED life to 25,000 hours. With an IP 65-rating, it is totally protected against dust and low-pressure water from all directions.

Smart Strands Makes Its Industry Debut

Smart Strands, a wholesale holiday lighting company based in San Francisco, California, makes its debut with a unique new line of LED holiday lights imported from China. The line carves out a niche in the holiday lighting market through its quality energy-saving LED products with prices that are more than 30% less than the industry standard.
LED holiday lighting uses approximately 90-95% less electricity than the older, conventional incandescent holiday lights. San Franciscan shopping districts including Union Square, Maiden Lane, the Fillmore Merchants and the Divisadero Corridor are already using LED holiday lights, showing their support for the environmentally friendly lighting product.
According to principal Mark McGinty, Smart Strands “was developed to help installers, municipalities and other businesses nationwide afford the transition from incandescent strands to LED strands. For the past few years, the biggest hurdles to transitioning over to LED lights have been the pricing and the look. To address these issues, Smart Strands has created a line of warm white LED holiday lights with a greater resemblance to the traditional incandescent strands. As well, our research and design team has created a pure white LED strand that reminds us of the color of white snow. We offer all of our products at excellent prices because we care about the environment and our aim is to help installers nationwide become 100% planet friendly.” According to San Francisco´s utility company, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), operating 300 C6 LED lights for 5 hours a day for 45 days, will cost approximately $0.43 for the entire time. Alternatively, 300 mini incandescent lights for the same time would cost $4.50 in energy.

LED Lighting Scholar Joins Seoul Semiconductor

Shuji Nakamura, widely known as the “Thomas Edison of the LED industry” has been named a scientific adviser to the leading global LED manufacturer Seoul Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Nakamura is a professor at the Materials Department of the College of Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). He is widely known for having developed the high-brightness blue LED based on GaN in 1993 while working for Nichia Corporation in Japan. In those days, developing a blue LED was considered impossible; only red and green LEDs had been available for the prior 20 years. Prof. Nakamura’s innovation allowed LED manufacturers to produce LEDs with three primary colors (red, green and blue) which could be mixed to express 16 million colors. Perhaps most importantly, the new technology was leveraged by the LED industry to begin commercial production of white LEDs, the semiconductor ecological light source. GaN-based white LED will be an integral part of the global wave of lighting upgrades worldwide.  Nakamura is a co-author of “The Blue Laser Diode: The Complete Story” (Springer, 2000). His work is chronicled in the book “Brilliant! Shuji Nakamura And the Revolution in Lighting Technology” by Bob Johnstone (Prometheus Books, 2007).

GE Leads LED Quality Standards Push

For businesses and municipalities around the world, the emergence of light-emitting diode (LED) lighting systems that can cut lighting energy costs as much as 80 percent and drastically reduce lighting maintenance costs has generated a desperate need for standardization of product performance claims. GE Lighting Solutions is addressing the issues of LED quality and reliability by pushing for a universal set of LED performance standards. Much of its work with NEMA, the Department of Energy/ENERGY STAR, ANSI, Intertek and IESNA centers on the development of measurement, efficiency and performance guidelines that clarify LED standards. To help customers navigate the brave new world of LED lighting, GE Lighting Solutions has developed and published a list of 10 questions that purchase decision-makers should ask before committing to buy products and services from any LED lighting systems provider.

Mighty Bright Debuts the LED USB Light

Mighty Bright introduces the LED USB Light, a portable LED light to illuminate computer laptop keyboards in low light environments, and the newest addition to Mighty Bright’s line of portable LED lights. The Mighty Bright LED USB Light is portable, adjustable, and environmentally friendly. The compact and flexible LED USB Light is perfect for traveling, folding and fitting easily into laptop bags. Available in two models featuring one or two durable and long lasting LEDs, the LED USB Light requires no batteries, and plugs into any standard Type A USB port for full keyboard illumination.

New alloys key to efficient energy and lighting

A recent advance by Arizona State University researchers in developing nanowires could lead to more efficient photovoltaic cells for generating energy from sunlight, and to better light-emitting diodes (LEDs) that could replace less energy-efficient incandescent light bulbs. Electrical engineers Cun-Zheng Ning and Alian Pan are working to improve quaternary alloy semiconductor nanowire materials. Nanowires are tens of nanometers in diameter and tens of microns in length. Quaternary alloys are made of semiconductors with four elements, often made by alloying two or more compound semiconductors. Semiconductors are the material basis for technologies such as solar cells, high-efficiency LEDs for lighting, and for visible and infrared detectors.
One of the most critical parameters of semiconductors that determine the feasibility for these technologies is the band gap. The band gap of a semiconductor determines, for example, if a given wavelength of sun light is absorbed or left unchanged by the semiconductor in a solar cell. Band gap also determines what color of light an LED emits. To make solar cells more efficient, it's necessary to increase the range of band gaps. Ideally, the highest solar cell efficiency is achieved by having a wide range of band gaps that matches the entire solar spectrum, explains Ning, a professor in the School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering, a part of ASU's Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering.
In LED lighting applications, he says, more available band gaps means more colors can be emitted, providing more flexibility in color engineering or color rendering of light. For example, different proportions of red, green and blue colors would mix with different white colors. More flexibility would allow white color to be adjusted to suit various situations, or individual preferences. Similarly, Ning says, detection of different colors requires semiconductors of different band gaps. The more band gaps that are available, the more information can be acquired about an object to be detected. Thus, all of these lighting applications can be improved by having semiconductors with a wide range of band gaps. The researchers say the hurdle is that every manmade or naturally occurring semiconductor has only a specific band gap. One standard way to broaden the range of band gaps is to alloy two or more semiconductors. By adjusting the relative proportion of two semiconductors in an alloy, it's possible to develop new band gaps between those of the two semiconductors. But accomplishing this requires a condition called lattice constant matching, which requires similar inter-atomic spaces between two semiconductors to be grown together.
"This is why we cannot grow alloys of arbitrary compositions to achieve arbitrary band gaps," Ning says. "This lack of available band gaps is one of reasons current solar cell efficiency is low, and why we do not have LED lighting colors that can be adjusted for various situations." In recent attempts to grow semiconductor nanowires with "almost" arbitrary band gaps, the research team led by Ning and Pan, an assistant research professor, have used a new approach to produce an extremely wide range of band gaps.
They alloyed two semiconductors, zinc sulfide (ZnS) and cadmium selenide (CdSe) to produce the quaternary semiconductor alloy ZnCdSSe, which produced continuously varying compositions of elements on a single substrate (a material on which a circuit is formed or fabricated). Ning says this the first time a quaternary semiconductor has been produced in the form of a nanowire or nanoparticle. By controlling the spatial variation of various elements and the temperature of a substrate (called the dual-gradient method), the team produced light emissions that ranged from 350 to 720 nanometers on a single substrate only a few centimeters in size. The color spread across the substrate can be controlled to a large degree, and Ning says he believes this dual-gradient method can be more generally applied to produce other alloy semiconductors or expand the band gap range of these alloys. To explore the use of quaternary alloy materials for making photovoltaic cells more efficient, his team has developed a lateral multi-cell design combined with a dispersive concentrator.

World Prepares to Turn Lights Off in Honor of Earth Hour

On Saturday, March 27th at 8:30 p.m. local time, the largest ever public demonstration for action on climate change will take place as lights are symbolically turned off for one hour in homes, office buildings, iconic landmarks, government buildings and retail establishments across the globe for Earth Hour. Ninety-two countries and regions around the world have now made the pledge for Earth Hour to show the world what can be done to fight climate change. Last year 88 countries got involved in the lights out event.
With confirmation that the Tokyo Tower in Tokyo and Brandenburg Gate in Berlin will both turn off their lights for Earth Hour, all members of the G20 are now taking part in the event.
The Las Vegas Strip, Mount Rushmore, Sea World, the Empire State Building and the Golden Gate Bridge will join other iconic landmarks from around the world in switching off the lights for Earth Hour. CN Tower in Toronto, Grand Palace in Bangkok, Table Mountain in Cape Town, the London Eye, Hiroshima Peace Memorial and Taipei 101 will plunge into darkness to shed light on dangerous climate change. Citizens of the United States will unite with individuals, businesses, civil groups and governments around the world including Athens, Bangkok, Cape Town, Delhi, Dubai, Geneva, Hong Kong, Istanbul, Manila, Moscow, Rome, Seoul, Singapore, Sydney, Tel Aviv and Toronto. Communities will come together like never before with cities such as Stockholm and Hiroshima holding their inaugural Earth Hour. Countries participating in Earth Hour for the first time include: Brunei, Cambodia, Czech Republic, Kosovo, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mongolia, Mozambique, Nepal, Northern Mariana Islands, Oman, Panama, Paraguay, Tanzania, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the Faroe Islands.

Philips acquires Luceplan

Royal Philips Electronics has acquired Italy-based Luceplan SpA, which will become part of the Consumer Luminaires business in the Philips Lighting sector. Philips Lighting Consumer Luminaires CEO Allard Bijlsma commented: “With the acquisition of Luceplan we are acquiring an iconic design brand in the premium design segment which enjoys higher growth rates and margins than the overall consumer lighting market.

Primestar LED announces new 15 Watt LED T8 Tube

Primestar LED announces the addition of their 15 watt T8 and T5 tubes to their Elara Series of indoor ceiling LED fixtures and lamps. The product presents comparable light output to traditional T8 fluorescent tubes due to the efficacy of the LED’s in concert with the directional nature of the light source. Primestar’s LED tubes are greater than 50% more energy efficient compared to traditional 32 watt T8 fluorescent tubes.
Unlike fluorescent tubes, LED lights do not flicker creating strain on the eyes. Also, the LED light does not generate UV rays or infrared rays like fluorescents. Primestar LED’s T8 tube is typically more than 50% more efficient than fluorescent T8 tubes, they last for up to 50,000 or more, contain no harmful mercury and improve the quality of the light. To learn more, visit www.primestarLED.com.