Seoul Semiconductor celebrates patent victory!

Nichia had filed a patent infringement suit against Seoul Semiconductor in October 2007 and SemiLEDs (Idaho US). In return, Seoul asked the Korea Intellectual Property Tribunal to investigate the validity of the Nichia’s patent (patent “482″). after an exhustive examination, the KIPT determined that Nichia’s patent “482″ lacked inventiveness and was ruled invalid giving cause for Seoul and SemiLEDs something to cheer about. Incendentilly, the Seoul’s Z-power LED P9 series (the LEDs in question according to Nichias original filing) contained Mvp LED chips from SemiLEDs. This is the second patent infringement case filed by Nichia against Seoul to be dismissed and the Nichia patent ultimately invalidated in the last few months, hurting Nichia and bolstering Seoul’s confidence, if not their market position.

Following the decision from the KIPT, a unnamed Seoul official commented that “following another invalidation of Nichia’s patents, which were asserted against Seoul, Seoul is in a stronger position and feels confident that we will prevail in all the patent infringement lawsuits pending against Nichia.” Ouch!

Seoul’s spokesperson continued that “as a company which respects patent rights, we will continue to sincerely evaluate the valid scope of all patents relating to our products, and where necessary will not hesitate to verify the facts in patent disputes.”

Nichia had no comment.

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Green LEDs no longer holding back high-power LED projectors?

Producing green LEDs with enough “poop” (output for all you engineering-types ) to allow their use in high-powered projection systems has been a real drag. A company called Goldeneye thinks they have come up with the solution with their patented “light recycling” technology which they claim can produce over an RGB white output over 430 lumens per square-millimeter. That is quite a bit of light from an RGB HP LED module and Goldenye claims it’s an industry record. I don’t doubt it.

Kudos to goldeneye! Very kewl!

Click here to read the article from LEDs Magazine

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Rogue Epoxy Causes Sticky Situation for Lumileds

LEDs Magazine – Lumileds ditches rogue epoxy, restarts production

First there were rogue waves, made famous by the movie A Perfect Storm and now a bigger threat looms menacingly on the horizon….duh…duh….DUH….ROGUE EPOXY! Ahhhhhhhhhh……..<author runs away screaming>. Rogue epoxy? What the heck, exactly, IS rogue epoxy? Did the epoxy refuse to wash it’s hands after using the mens room? Does it steal from the rich to give to the poor? If you read this article it will go on to say that Lumileds has concluded that a batch of epoxy used to make their TFFC LEDs (used in Luxeon Rebel and Luxeon K2 LEDs), was “contaminated”. Then they refer to the epoxy as “non-conforming” which had the potential to cause the LED dies to prematurely crack. Then they mention that this “rogue epoxy” has been replaced with “fresh supplies”. FRESH supplies…..Is anyone else getting the vibe that nobody was paying attention and the night guy grabbed that old, dented, leaky can of epoxy from 1998 that the Haz-Mat guy’s were supposed to come and collect six months ago and dumped it into the production hopper? Well whatever actually happened, that “rogue epoxy” sure turned out to be expensive. First the production stoppage, then the recall, then all new epoxy (should have done this anyway), and now a host of reliability testing on the quarantined new production before the final release at the end of February. Not to mention the unknown cost in PR.

Would have been cheaper to throw the night guy into the production hopper.

Just kidding

Click the link above to read the whole story from LEDs Magazine

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OLEDs from Osram Offer Optimized Occular….uh….Did I say They’re Transparent?

It’s been awhile since I posted hasn’t it? Sorry. I had a baby in there somewhere and then the holidays came up. It’s good to be back. Well, looks like I missed that Osram is making some noise in the OLED industry with their new high-performance OLEDs that put out 20 lumens per watt with a brightness of 1000 candela per square meter (thats 1000 Nits for all you screen people out there). The really neat features here are that these white OLEDs are transparent (nearly) when off or on. Currently they’re about 55% transparent but Osram is looking to bump that up to 75% with further development. Light output for each side of the OLED can be individually controlled. Think of putting these things into cubicle walls so that during the day, they’re nearly clear like a window and at night, can emit some nice diffuse light into the cube for all your overnight “work” binges. Hey, why not have it emit tons of light OUT from the cube at night so you can get some sleep and blind anyone who comes by to check on your progress? Kewl!

Checkout the full story at LEDs Magazine

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OPINION POLL: Is The Incadescent Light Bulb Dead?

Just a quick opinion question….

Do You Think The Incandescent Light Bulb Is Dead?
(Click link to give your answer. You will be taken to PollDaddy.com)

I would greatly appreciate it if all readers could take the few seconds to click the link and answer the poll.

Thanks!

Sharp Takes Stab at Multi-Chip LED Modules

Sorry I’ve been away from blogging lately. Great to be back. Well, let’s start out with a neat little piece about Sharp. Sharp has recently introduced a line of LED modules each consisting of 30 LED chips divided into 10 parallel-switched groups of 3 LED chips on an aluminum ceramic substrate. The modules range from standard white to warm white up to what Sharp calls “High Color Rendering” (HCR) modules. These have CRI (Color Rendering Index) of 90. These new modules range in output from 170 lumens for the HCR modules to 280 lumens for the standard white module when driven at 360 mA. I’d like to see how well these can handle being driven to 720 mA on a graphite heat spreader. Anyrate, stated efficiencies are 80 lumens per watt for the standard white down to 50 lumens per watt for the HCR. Stated life cycle is 40,000 hours for all modules in the line.

Now all Sharp has to do is come up with a really spiffy name for these things and they’ll be all set. Maybe, Sharp Light Sabers…no,no,no….Sharp Star-O’s….Sharpeon’s? Super Sharp’s? Sharpstone? Hmmm….

Anyrate, you can check out the entire press release at LEDs Magazine

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Finally, Germicidal UV LEDs for the Rest of Us!

I was recently asked if I knew where one could get Germicidal UVC LEDs since I had blogged about the technology a while back. Well, I do so I am blogging it here for all to see in case you may be interested. Now I am talking “commercially available” not some pie-in-the-sky R&D type of availability.

Sensor Electronic Technology (S.E.T.) is commercially shipping deep UV LEDs that they call UVTOP LEDs that range in output wavelength from 247 to 365 nm. The output power is typically 0.5 mW at 20 mA forward current. They are typically multi-die, single can LEDs mounted in TO-39 or TO-18 cans. The cans in this case are specially designed with internal reflectors to maximize output. The LEDs are available with or without ball or flat lenses to boost output power and narrow the beam profile.

Being as S.E.T. is the basically the only game in town right now (they have partnered with Seoul Semiconductor so I imagine we will start to see these coming out through Seoul’s distribution channels, especially in Asia and perhaps even see the die technology licensed off) you don’t really have a choice of deep UV LEDs so you’ll have to pay the gigantic price of nearly $300.00 each in single quantities for 250 nm LEDs (they get cheaper the further up toward the UVA you go).

Beyond price, this is still very good news for both S.E.T. and the rest of us in the LED industry since up until now, there wasn’t an alternative so kudos to S.E.T. for the way cool technology and making it available to the rest of us!

Click here to check out the line of UVTOP deep UV LEDs from Sensor Electronic Technology, including datasheets and their pricelist.

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Novaled Produces Super Efficient, Super Bright, Superlicious OLEDs

Novaled has announced that they now have OLED panels capable of producing 1,000 candela per square meter with an efficiency of 35 lumens per watt with a reported lifetime of 100,000 hours. Thats no small feat. The Color Rendering Index (CRI) was 90. The testing was done with consideration for only the forward light emissions, that is to say all light coming out the back and the sides of the panel was blocked. This accurately mimics a real-world application since these are almost exclusively used ad backlights. Evidentally, they were able to crank up the brightness to 4,000 candela per square meter and the efficiency only dropped to 31lumens per watt with no change in color or CRI.

Kudos to Novaled!

Click here to read the whole story on LEDS Magazine

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Cree To Install Cree LEDs In Cree’s Facilities

Cree announced their plans to convert all lighting in their headquarters and manufacturing facility to lighting fixtures with Cree XLamp LEDs.

I don’t know…..does anybody else out there feel like Cree’s announcement to adopt LED lighting in their headquarters and manufacturing facility seems a bit odd? Don’t you feel like Cree should have already been using LEDs everywhere? I mean, the CEO should have XLamps surgically implanted in his forehead. Hay! Headlamps! Get it? <insert groans here> That was my initial reaction and I suspect that might be the initial reactions of a lot of people, including Cree’s customers.

Releasing this announcement to the newswire does illustrate Cree’s commitment to developing efficient LED technology that will eventually replace traditional lighting but at the same time it highlights the fact that LED luminaires are fairly new and LED technology costly (initially)as compared to traditional lamps which is something that not even Cree, who makes the darn things, could ignore ,further illustrating that Cree hasn’t been using them which can be disconcerting to customers. On a more positive note: Kudos to Cree for launching the LED Workplace website (www.ledworkplace.org) which looks like it will be a terrific place to exchange information about LED luminaire data and cost savings on workplace LED installations.

Also, in the release it says “in total the new LED lights use 48% less energy than the incandescent, fluorescent and high-pressure sodium lights they replaced” Uh…commercially available Cree XLamp LEDs are not more efficient then HP Sodium lights and produce nowhere near as much light over as broad an area. I don’t think we’ll be seeing LEDs replace sodium vapor lamps anytime soon. Perhaps chock that up to an over-zealous PR writer?

Click here to read the full announcement at LEDs Magazine

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It’s a Bird..It’s A Plane…No It’s Novaled OLEDs of Steel!

I couldn’t resist. Sorry. Interesting technology, really. Essentially you deposit OLEDs onto thin, electrically conductive, flexible steel instead of the current thin glass designs and presto-change’o! You’ve got LEDs that can be rolled out by the zillions rapidly onto gigantic rolls like steel for the automobile industry. Try that with glass. BLAM!

Click here to checkout the full Novaled and ArcelorMittal OLEDs on steel article.

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