White Papers

White Paper | Standardization + Regulation | Apr 29, 2017

Zhaga Announces Several Updates and Reports About Activities in their Latest June Newsletter

June has been a very busy month for Zhaga, with the consortium’s first meeting in China combined with an open session for government officials and representatives from China’s lighting industry. Meanwhile, the first products have now been certified for Zhaga interface specification Books 4, 7 and 8, while Zhaga has signed a liaison with the Global Lighting Association. Read more »

White Paper | Standardization + Regulation | Apr 29, 2017

The Connected Lighting Alliance Extends Scope to Indoor Professional Lighting

Following its endorsement of ZigBee Light Link as the preferred common open standard for residential connected lighting applications, The Connected Lighting Alliance announced today the launch of a new initiative focused on the indoor professional lighting market. The Alliance will analyze market requirements for indoor professional lighting applications and identify standard development organizations to engage with. As an open association, the Alliance invites interested companies to join the industry initiative and share their expertise in this field. The contribution of multiple companies in the lighting industry will greatly benefit the global adoption of wireless lighting solutions. Read more »

White Paper | Standardization + Regulation | Apr 29, 2017

SEMI's LED Standards Committee HB-LED Standard Published

After the formation of the high-brightness light-emitting diode (HB-LED) Standards Committee in November 2010 the committee was working hard on HB standards. The committee is happy to announce that it now has approved its first standard, SEMI HB1: Specifications for Sapphire Wafers Intended for Use for Manufacturing High Brightness-Light Emitting Diode Devices. Developed by the HB-LED Wafer Task Force, SEMI HB1 defines and specifies the physical geometry of 150 mm diameter sapphire wafers used in HB-LED manufacturing. HB1 covers dimensional, wafer preparation, and crystallographic orientation characteristics, as well as the appropriate measurement methods. The document was approved by the HB-LED Committee during the North America Fall 2012 meetings, recently completed procedural review and will be published soon. Read more »

White Paper | Standardization + Regulation | Apr 29, 2017

Model Specification for Adaptive Control and Remote Monitoring of LED Roadway Luminaires, V1.0

The DOE Municipal Solid-State Street Lighting Consortium's Model Specification for Adaptive Control and Remote Monitoring of LED Roadway Luminaires is a tool designed to help cities, utilities, and other local agencies accelerate their adoption of systems that can further reduce the energy and maintenance costs of operating their streetlights. Read more »

White Paper | Standardization + Regulation | Apr 29, 2017

EMerge Alliance Releases Version 1.1 of Occupied Space Standard

Progress continues toward integrated standards for DC microgrids in buildings SAN RAMON, CALIF. (October 2, 2012) – The EMerge Alliance – an open industry association leading the rapid adoption of safe direct-current (DC) power distribution standards for commercial buildings – today announced it has updated the EMerge Alliance Occupied Space standard, the first application platform model for the utilization of low-voltage DC power in commercial interiors. The EMerge Alliance Occupied Space standard creates an integrated, open platform for power, interior infrastructures, controls and a wide variety of peripheral devices to facilitate the hybrid use of AC and DC power within commercial buildings. Version 1.1 includes several important updates to voltage limits, recommended cable sizes and other requirements to assist companies developing products when using the standard. These changes are backwards compatible and maximize the interoperability and efficiency of EMerge Alliance Registered products. Read more »

White Papers | Optics + Opt. Materials | Resources | Apr 21, 2017

White Paper: Shaping LED Diffuser Performance with Polycarbonate Materials

The LED lighting market continues to grow, yet consumers are accustomed to the soft white diffused light from incandescent bulbs. To speed up adoption, manufacturers are utilizing plastic materials containing diffusion additives to offset harsh LED illumination and eliminate hot spots. It’s important to choose the correct diffusion plastic to meet to meet transmission, color and UL requirements. In this paper, we examine how plastic selection, a diffusion package and color help designers achieve the desired look for their application. Read more »

White Paper: Predicting Scatter of Light Shaping Diffuser® Angles Using Luminit’s Proprietary Optical Model and OpticStudio

Luminit has developed a proprietary scatter model for users of Zemax. Unlike conventional optical design programs that provide bulk scatter and surface scatter models that “predict” output distribution, Luminit’s proprietary optical model accurately calculates surface effects so users can choose the Light Shaping Diffuser (LSD) angle that offers the most optimized performance. This white paper describes the characteristics of the LSD scatter model and the level of accuracy that can be achieved during this critical stage of the design cycle. Read more »

OLEDs | White Papers | Optics + Opt. Materials | Resources

Manufacturability of OLED Encapsulation and Light Extraction

Applications for OLEDs in lighting are opening unique possibilities for designers; however, the organic materials make OLEDs more fragile than LEDs. A higher-index Luminit Light Shaping Diffuser® developed into a barrier film could be an excellent substrate for OLEDs, encapsulating them while simultaneously supporting them. Read more »

White Paper | Technology | Jul 21, 2015

Litecool Demonstrates that Narrow Beam LED Packages Are a Real Possibility

Litecool has been working on various LED package designs to give luminaire manufacturers an LED package that doesn’t need any further lensing or reflectors to give the desired beam patterns for lighting applications. Read more »

White Paper | Technology | May 27, 2015

BluGlass Demonstrates Improved Performance Results for Green RPCVD Manufactured p-GaN LEDs

BluGlass has succeeded in its initial experimentation of applying low temperature RPCVD p-GaN to Green LED applications with highly promising results. These results show that the green LEDs produced using RPCVD p-GaN are demonstrating greater efficiency than the BluGlass grown MOCVD benchmark LEDs using the exact same MOCVD grown multi-quantum wells (MQWs), the critical light emitting region of an LED device. Read more »

White Paper | Technology | Mar 30, 2015

TRIAC Dimmable, Isolated LED Driver with High Power Factor Needs No Opto-Isolators

As environmental concerns over traditional lighting in-crease and the price of LEDs decreases, high power LEDs are fast becoming a popular lighting solution for offline applications. In order to meet the requirements of offline lighting - such as high power factor, high efficiency, isolation and TRIAC dimmer compatibility - prior LED drivers used many external discrete components, resulting in cumbersome solutions. By Wei Gu Applications Engineering Section Leader at Linear Technology demonstrates how new solutions reduce complexity while improving performance. Read more »

Resources | White Papers | Light Sources | Engineering | Simulation Tools

WHITE PAPER: "Accurate LED Source Modeling Using TracePro"

Modern optical modeling programs allow product design engineers to create, analyze, and optimize LED sources and LED optical systems as a virtual prototype prior to manufacturing the actual product. The precision of these virtual models depends on accurately representing the components that make up the model, including the light source. Read more »

Resources | White Papers | Thermal Management

WHITE PAPER: "High Intensity UV LED Sources Enabled by Next Generation Substrates"

Thermal management of high-power UV LEDs is substantially more demanding than for white LEDs. This arises due to their lower efficacy combined with the end use requirement for intense light sources. Critical to the thermal management of densely packed LED arrays is the substrate the semiconductors are mounted on. This whitepaper investigates how next generation Nanoceramic substrates can benefit the LED industry and presents a case study of a 75W UV LED module, just 2cm². Read more »

Simulation Tools | Engineering | White Papers | Optics + Opt. Materials | Resources

WHITE PAPER: "LED Reflector and Lens Simulation using TracePro® Illumination Design and Analysis Software"

TracePro® allows users to design, analyze, and optimize LED lighting systems using software simulation prior to building hardware. The resultant accuracy of these models depends on the accuracy of the components that make up the model. These include light source characteristics, surface and material properties, and model geometry. Read more »

White Paper | Technology | Feb 17, 2015

The Future of More Efficient LEDs and Lasers Probably Starts in 2D

The future of electronics could lie in a material from its past, as researchers from The Ohio State University work to turn germanium - the material of 1940s transistors - into a potential replacement for silicon. Read more »

White Paper | Technology | Feb 16, 2015

Osram Improves Efficiency of Blue LED Chips by Reducing Forward Voltage

Osram Opto Semiconductors has achieved one of the best values in the world in terms of forward voltage for blue high-current chips. This has led to an increase in efficiency of up to eight percent. Optimized InGaN chips (Indium-Gallium-Nitride) featuring UX:3 chip technology are the basis for blue or white LEDs – and are already used in production. Osram experts also see considerable potential for reducing the value by a further 20 to 30 millivolts (mV) by the summer of 2015 – offering a further boost in efficiency. Read more »

White Paper | Technology | Feb 05, 2015

Universities Develop Novel LEDs by Band-Structure Engineering in van der Waals Heterostructures

Semi-transparent, flexible electronics are no longer just science-fiction thanks to graphene’s unique properties, University of Manchester researchers have found. Published in the scientific journal Nature Materials, University of Manchester and University of Sheffield researchers show that new 2D ‘designer materials’ can be produced to create flexible, see-through and more efficient electronic devices including semi-transparent LEDs. Read more »

Fundings + Projects | White Paper | Jan 15, 2015

Holst Centre and Flex-o-Fab Take the First Step Towards "Lighting by the Mile"

Researchers from the EU-funded Flex-o-Fab project have successfully fabricated working OLED devices on a flexible barrier layer produced in a roll-to-roll (R2R) process. Produced on a PET plastic film, this breakthrough is a significant first step towards taking flexible OLEDs ‘from lab to fab’ and hence to commercial production. It draws on technical developments achieved within both Flex-o-Fab and Holst Centre’s joint research program into high-performance flexible barriers for organic electronics. Read more »

White Paper | Technology | Jan 15, 2015

Ending the Invisible Threat - Confronting the LED Flickering Issue

One of the topics in 2014 International LIGHTFAIR DOE training was “SSL Flicker Fundamentals and Why We Care“ (Michael Poplawski and Naomi Miller 2014),this reignited the industry’s discussion on light modulation. This topic was already raised by ASSIST earlier, where research on human’s level of tolerance to high-frequency flickers have been done and published in several lighting magazines by Rebekah Mullaney, hoping to encourage LED manufacturers and distributors to put more emphasis on finding a permanent solution that is more suitable for people’s well-being. - Andy Fei and Nina Chen from ALT-LED summarize these flicker research results and explain how to avoid flicker issues. Read more »

White Paper | Technology | Jan 09, 2015

Compute Simulation Sheds Light On Why Blue LEDs Are So Tricky To Make

Researchers in our Department of Chemistry have collaborated with groups at University College London (UCL) and Daresbury to uncover the mystery of why blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are so difficult to make, by revealing the complex properties of their main component – gallium nitride – using sophisticated computer simulations. Read more »

White Paper | Technology | Jan 09, 2015

LpS 2014 Scientific Award Winner Article: New Binning Strategy for White LEDs

After having recognized the deficiencies of the ANSI binning strategy, which is based on the visually false magnification of MacAdam’s ellipses, Dr. Peter Bodrogi and Prof. Tran Quoc Khanh from the Technical University Darmstadt propose a new binning strategy based on a so-called semantic interpretation to describe and easily communicate the magnitude of acceptable chromaticity differences. Read more »

White Paper | Standardization + Regulation | Dec 11, 2014

Zhaga Consortium Starts Work on New Specification for COB LED Arrays

In response to feedback from a broad range of stakeholders, the Zhaga Consortium, which develops specifications for interchangeable LED light sources, is now working on a new Book that will include Chip-on-Board (COB) LED arrays. The new Zhaga Book will specify a family of six rectangular or square LED modules with different dimensions. Read more »

White Paper | Technology | Nov 21, 2014

Thermoresponsive PDLC Coating for Smart CCT-Tunable LED Applications

When the 2014 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded this October to three Japanese-born scientists for the invention of blue light emitting diodes (LEDs), the prize committee declared LED lamps would light the 21st century. Now researchers from the Netherlands propose a novel way to ensure the lights of the future not only are energy efficient but also emit a cozy warmth. Cornelissen and his colleagues from the Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands describe their new LEDs in a paper published in The Optical Society's (OSA) open-access journal Optics Express. Read more »

White Paper | Technology | Aug 28, 2014

Osram Opto Demonstrates "3D nano LEDs" for White Light and Sees Series Maturity in Coming Years

By making use of nanotechnology, Osram hopes to produce significantly more LED chips with its existing production plant. Osram researchers have for the first time succeeded in manufacturing a so-called "3D nano LED" for white light. The productivity boost is possible due to the special surface characteristics of the LED chip – in contrast to today's standard models, this is not smooth but consists of many adjacent, microscopically small columns with a three-dimensional structure, thus increasing its light-generating area. The new technology is expected to achieve series maturity in coming years, and Osram would then be one of the first companies to use this technology. Read more »

White Paper | IP, Reports & Roadmaps | May 22, 2014

Yole Releases New Nanowire LED IP Study - Startups Compete with Asian LED Giants in the IP Landscape

Asian giants Samsung, Panasonic and LG are the top three patent assignees for Nanowire LED technology. Facing them are several startups including glo, Aledia and Ecospark, which between them have raised more than $150M - thus confirming their serious interest in this field. However, these newcomers face strong technological challenges. Read more »

White Paper | IP, Reports & Roadmaps | Apr 23, 2014

GaN-on-Silicon Substrate Patent Investigation - Knowmade & Yole See More Players on the Playground

GaN-on-Si technology appeared naturally as an alternative to GaN-on-Sapphire—the main stream technology for LED applications. Today, despite potential cost benefits, the mass adoption of GaN-on-Si technology for LED applications remains unclear. Most major LED makers have a patenting activity related to GaN-on-Si technology, but so far, few have made it the core of their strategy and technology roadmap. Contrary to the LED industry, we expect GaN-on-Si to be widely adopted by Power Electronics and RF applications because of its lower cost and CMOS compatibility. Read more »

White Paper | Standardization + Regulation | Apr 09, 2014

EEPCA & LightingEurope Announce ENEC+ - The First European Mark That Certifies the Initial Performance of LEDs and Other Luminaires

EEPCA, the European Electrical Products Certification Association, in cooperation with LightingEurope, today announced the launch of ENEC+, the first pan-European mark capable of certifying the initial performance of traditional and LED luminaires. The new performance rating provides the market with certification as to the compliance of LED light fixtures and other luminaires, proving compliance with European safety standards and ensuring the reliability of their stated performance characteristics at the beginning of their life cycle. Read more »

White Paper | Standardization + Regulation | Apr 08, 2014

Zhaga Starts Work on New Books

The Zhaga Consortium, a global lighting-industry organization that is enabling interchangeable LED light engines, has started the development of three new interface specifications, known as Books. The new Books are designated numbers 9, 10 and 11. Read more »

White Paper | IP, Reports & Roadmaps | Mar 20, 2014

Yole Développement's GaN-on-Si Report Forecasts Future of power Electronics and LEDs

Yole Développement releases this week the GaN-on-Si Substrate Technology and Market for LED and Power Electronics report. Under this report, Yole Développement reviews the GaN-on-Si technology growth, challenges and solutions. Dr Hong Lin and Dr Eric Virey, Yole Développement’s analysts give an overview of GaN-on-Si epiwafer playground. This report also provides an in-depth analysis of the GaN-on-Si technology for LED and power electronic applications, including technology and cost aspect. Yole Développement’s analysts, both develop possible business models for the adoption of GaN-on-Si technology. GaN-on-Si substrate technology and market for LED and Power Electronics report also includes market volume and revenue forecast to 2020. Read more »

White Paper | Standardization + Regulation | Mar 17, 2014

Zhaga Aims to Enable Independent Interchangeability of LED Modules and Drivers

The Zhaga Consortium, which develops specifications for interchangeable LED light engines, has decided that it will also aim to enable LED modules and drivers that are independently interchangeable. This is in addition to Zhaga’s stated aim to enable interchangeability of LED light engines. Read more »