Signify announced an innovative creation of virtual reality (VR) development for its customers. With the new lighting VR apps, Philips Fashion Lighting VR and Philips Urban VR, users can immerse themselves in the virtual world to visualize how lighting can transform their fashion store or city street.

The on-going development of LED research and bioelectronics medicine has sparked off a new solution for curing bladder problems. A team consisting of researchers from Washington University School of Medicine, the University of Illinois and Northwestern University has created an implantable device with biointegrated LEDs that can detect and tamp overactivity in the bladder. The research team of neuroscientists and engineers introduced a miniaturized bio-optoelectronic device that is soft and stretchy and implanted it around the bladder of the lab rats. The device expands ...

This year at CES, big names for TVs and displays have again geared up with their most attracting products to amaze visitors from all over the world. Large size TV with ultra-high resolution is taking over the market with the leading brands presenting 8K TV. Meanwhile, OLED and Micro LED are still two of the most noticeable display technologies at the show as Samsung revealed its latest Micro LED display and LG showcased the world’s first rollable OLED TV. Micro LED Displays: Samsung, PlayNitride and Sanan Optoelectronics Samsung’s ...

Hyundai MOBIS is showcasing the latest Communication Lighting concept at CES 2019. Communication Lighting uses an "Indicating Lighting Zone" to indicate when an autonomous vehicle is operating in self-driving mode. The concept also includes a "Communication Lighting Zone" that uses LED, digital boards, headlamp projection and sound to communicate with nearby pedestrians and vehicles during various driving scenarios. According to Hyundai MOBIS, autonomous vehicles outfitted with Communication Lighting can detect a pedestrian from more tha...

AIXTRON announced that it has signed a Joint Collaboration Agreement with PlayNitride to accelerate technical and commercial breakthroughs of Micro LED. AIXTRON’s AIX G5+ C MOCVD system will be adopted by PlayNitride for the manufacturing of GaN-based (gallium nitride) Micro LEDs. PlayNitride has presented Micro LED displays with high resolution and supplied its Micro LED chips to Samsung for the 75-inch Micro LED display demonstrated at CES 2019. By signing a joint collaboration agreement, AIXTRON and PlayNitride ...

ams announced its cooperation with Face++, a Chinese AI software developer, to accelerate OEMs’ and system integrators’ deployments of 3D optical sensing technologies such as face recognition. According to ams, the partnership with Face++ will enable manufacturers to bring facial recognition and other systems to market faster including functions like facial payments, Animoji creation and augmented/virtual reality. The 3D optical sensing solutions created by ams and Face++ use infrared light projectors to map the surface of real-world objects such as a user’...

ams, the Austria-based Apple supplier, has announced the release of its new sensing component which can measure ambient light from behind an OLED screen. The newly launched RGB light and IR proximity sensor IC, TCS3701, is featured with behind-screen light measuring ability. The capability supports today’s industrial design trend to maximize smartphone display area by eliminating front-facing bezels, where an ambient light/proximity sensor is typically located. With the new sensor, the next iPhone could be notch-free. (Image: ams) According to ams, it has...

Autonomous driving is one of the featured technologies at CES 2019. Automobile manufacturers, LiDAR developers as well as sensing components providers have all prepared to join the high profile event with their cutting-edge technologies. LEDinside has selected some noticeable exhibitors who are showcasing the next generation technology for autonomous driving applications. Velodyne Lidar Velodyne continues to present new products for CES 2019. Last week the company released that it will demonstrate Velodyne Alpha Puck™ and Velodyne Velarray™, sensors ma...

Plessey Semiconductors announced that it has worked with Nanoco Technologies, the UK-based cadmium-free quantum dot (CFQD) provider to shrink the pixel size of monolithic Micro LED displays. By combining Nanoco’s CFQD semiconductor nanoparticle technology and its existing monolithic process, Plessey will integrate the quantum dots into selected regions of blue LED wafers to add red and green light. The process could shrink the practical pixel size by 87 percent, from today’s 30µm to 4µm. The advance enables the production of smaller Micro...

Technology has realized many stories we learnt from sci-fi fictions and movies. A new technology like the “dermal regenerator” in Star Trek that heals wound with laser was developed by a research team from Arizona State University. Kaushal Rege, professor of Chemical Engineering at Arizona State University, and his team members has published a paper on Advanced Functional Materials which describes how they successfully repaired animal wounds with laser-activated silk and gold nanomaterials. The researchers embedded gold nanorods in a silk protein matrix as...

A student team from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology applied a freeform optical engineering concept for automotive LED headlight and has won a prize in the 2018 Global Capstone Design Fair held in South Korea. The students’ prototype utilizes freeform optics which requires less working parts than current headlight models. By utilizing molded plastic instead of the current practice of metal reflector cones, the headlight could be easier and cheaper to manufacture. With non-sequential ray tracing, the students designed a 3-D freeform lightguide to direct the light...

Apple was grated with several patents relating to smart fabric in the past week. One of them is a glove with integrated circuity and forces sensors that could connect to Apple device for monitoring blood pressure, respiration and heart rate, reported Patently Apple. (Image: The US Patent and Trademark Office) According to the patent, Apple embeds force sensing circuity into fabrics that could sense pressure and force on the fingers and/or palm area of the glove. The glove can transmit the information collected from the circuitry to other devices for further processing an...

Having looked back at the industry updates of Micro LED technology, let’s keep on reviewing the technology breakthroughs of Micro LED in the past year. KAIST Team Develops Flexible Vertical Micro LED to Cure Hair loss Problem In January, a researcher team at KAIST announced the development of flexible vertical micro LEDs (f-VLEDs). These f-VLEDs achieved optical power density (30 mW/mm2) three times higher than that of lateral Micro LEDs and can be applied to optogenetics for controlling the behavior of neuron cells and brains with...

For the LED and panel industry, the year of 2018 had a dramatic start with Samsung’s revealing of its Micro LED TV “The Wall” at the CES show. Since then, players in the industry have been releasing their achievements related to the next generation display technology. Several innovative solutions and applications have been disclosed in the past year including large size displays and wearable devices. As LEDinside has continued to track the progress of Micro LED development, we would like to list the significant breakthroughs and industry updates...

Plessey, the UK-based optoelectronic technology solutions provider, announced that it is going to demonstrate AR and VR glasses powered by Micro LEDs at CES 2019. Plessey’s Micro LEDs are put in action for AR applications with Vuzix, who has collaborated with Plessy in the development of Micro LED smart glasses. According to Plessey, its Micro LEDs offer 10 times the resolution, 100 times the contrast ratio, and up to 1,000 times the luminance compared to traditional OLEDs. Furthermore, the device uses only half the power consumption, doubling b...

Scientists have developed methods to generate power with living plants for lighting up LED bulbs, providing a “green” solution of sustainable power. The research was done by the interdisciplinary team of roboticists and biologists at IIT-Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia in Pontedera in Pisa, Italy with the results published on Advanced Functional Materials. The research, led by Fabian Meder, discovered that living plants can generate more than 150 Volts by a single leaf, which is enough to simultaneously power 100 LED light bulbs. Researchers also showe...

The “Micro LED Technology Research Contest” held by LEDinside has received numerous articles providing innovative and practical solutions to enhance the manufacturing of Micro LED during June 6th – September 10th, 2018. LEDinside was very excited to learn all these novel ideas and technologies offered by different institutes and companies from all over the world. Selecting the winning articles was a tough task as most of them have proposed unique perspectives on how to solve the mass transfer issue of Micro LED or improve their yield rate. 

A research team in Taiwan announced that its development of OLED lighting is ready for commercial production. According to the research leader, Dr. Jwo-Huei Jou at National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) in Taiwan, the team has developed OLED lighting that is similar to candle light which produces softer light source and does not cause harm to the human eye. (Image: ITRI) The OLED research team of NTHU worked with Electronic and Optoelectronic System Research Laboratories at ITRI and WiseChip Semiconductor in the development of low color t...

An international team discovered a single material which produces white light to improve LED lighting efficiency. The renewable energy research was recently published in Nature with the article contributed by researchers from The University of Toledo, Monash University, Jilin University, University of Toronto, Tsinghua University, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Wuhan University. (Image: Pixabay) Dr. Yanfa Yan, professor of physics at The University of Toledo, explained, "Due to its high efficiency, this new material can potentially replace the curre...

Researchers at the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology have developed LEDs comprising infrared colloidal quantum dots that enable high efficiency and low cost CMOS integration. Colloidal quantum dots are extremely small semiconductor particles which are as small as a few nanometers in size. Featured with small size, CQDs offer unique optical and electronic properties including absorbing and emitting light. Moreover, their properties change with their size and shape, smaller quantum dots emit in the blue range while larger quantum dots emit in the red. (Ima...

Apple has applied a patent related to optoelectronics devices for improving LiDAR sensors and applications, reported Patently Apple. The report said that Apple noted the demands for applications using 3D sensing and imaging systems and proposed enhanced technologies to integrate LiDAR and VCSEL for advanced 3D image technology. The new patent introduce a method to combine different types of light source and laser array such as diffractive optical elements or VCSEL to develop improved 3D image devices for various applications. (Image: Apple) Patently Ap...

ThorDrive, an autonomous vehicle (AV) startup, has utilized LiDAR sensors of Velodyne to realize its commercial vehicle services. On November 29th, ThorDrive is introducing the service with a kick-off event in Palo Alto with attendants including local government and business leaders. The initial service, in partnership with Hassett ACE Hardware, will support select residents of Channing House (senior housing) and fire departments in Palo Alto with plans to expand to additional pilots soon. The ThorDrive platform is using Velodyne’s lidar sensors to provi...

AquiSense Technologies, a U.S. based UV-C LED systems developer, announced its partnership with the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) and Washington University base on a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) for advanced development of UV LED disinfection system. Through the CRADA partnership, researchers at AquiSense and USEPA will work together at the National Homeland Security Research Center (NHSRC) and at Washington University for developing UV LED integrated water sterilizatio...

LiDAR startup Luminar and Volvo Cars revealed their development in LiDAR perception for safe autonomous driving technology. Volvo has announced to invest in Luminar in June and became the first of its partners to develop advanced perception capabilities for vehicles. Volvo Cars has introduced its vision for full autonomy with its 360c concept and worked closely with Luminar. At the AutoMobility show in Los Angeles, the two companies jointly demonstrated long-range perception capabilities on a live drive along Los Angeles highways and streets to show Volvo Cars lo...

The Netherland-based research center, Holst Centre and Fraunhofer FEP have developed the world's longest single-device OLED which of 15 meters long. The development opens the door to 'endless OLEDs' that manufacturers and designers can then easily tailor to their own needs. Holst Centre and Fraunhofer FEP worked together through Lyteus, an EU founded public-private partnership organization which brings together leaders in OLED technology from across Europe to create an OLED pilot production line and product development services. Under the fr...

Combining LED technology and medical research, several integrations have been revealed, showing the potential of the technology in healthcare applications and development. LEDinside has collected some innovative examples of LED applications which create possibilities for future medical improvement. Elastic Micro LED skin sensor system In February 2018, a new ultrathin, elastic Micro LED display that fits snugly on the skin was developed by researchers at the University of Tokyo and Dai Nippon Printing (DNP) in an academic-industrial collaboration. The int...

Scientists have developed several types of LED including OLEDs, quantum-dot-based LEDs (QLED), perovskite-based LEDs and Micro LEDs for the purpose of enhancing the brightness, contrast and resolution of displays as well as to reduce the production cost and energy use. A new research published on Nature has illustrated a development of OLEDs using free radicals which generate doublet emission with higher efficiency. In the research, scientists from China and the UK have demonstrated radical-based OLEDs that could reach an external quantum efficiency of ...

A new study published in the European Journal of Preventative Cardiology reported that exposure to blue light would decrease blood pressure and reduce the risk of developing cardiovascular disease. In previous studies, it is shown that UV light can help the skin to release nitric oxide and decrease blood pressure. Researchers from the University of Surrey and Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf have collaborated with Philips to learn whether body exposure to blue light also has the same effect as visible blue light is not carcinogenic compared to UV light. (Image: ...

Imec, the Belgium-based nanoelectronics research center, has worked with Ghent University and contact lens producer SEED to develop a contact lens integrated with LED light. The lens is presented at imec technology forum Japan (ITF Japan 2018) on November 19th, 2018. The contact lens with an integrated LED light is made of hydrogel-based material and is embedded with an ultra-thin silicon microchip, radio‐frequency (RF) antenna for wireless energy transfer, and stretchable thin‐film interconnections. imec and CMST, an imec research group at Ghent University...

U.S.-based material producer PPG and wireless power company Powercast have announced a joint development agreement to produce wirelessly powered printed electronics products for applications such as smart consumer packaging and smart ID cards. By leveraging the expertise from each other, the project will combine substrate and conductive inks from PPG and receiver technology of Powercast to develop LED-based wireless illumination solutions. With the technology, consumer packaging can light up itself to showcase products on a shelf. For smart ID cards, it can be illumina...