Articles & Interviews

Technology | LpR Article | Apr 05, 2013
Interview - Optics Production Technology for Customizing LED Luminaires
Interview - Optics Production Technology for Customizing LED Luminaires Siegfried Luger and Arno Grabher-Meyer from LED professional discuss future trends and challenges of the LED lighting business with Richard van de Vrie, CEO of LUXeXceL, a young company that is growing quickly. Van de Vrie owes much of his 25 years of experience in the lighting business to the family owned lighting company that he worked in. Read more »
Interview | Apr 26, 2012
LED Technology – Changing the Component Business in the Area of Lighting
LED Technology – Changing the Component Business in the Area of Lighting In an interview with LED professional, Volker Neu, the General Manager of LED at Vossloh-Schwabe Optoelectronic explains the influence LED technology has on the component business in the area of lighting. Internal and external changes and alterations are necessary to be able to adjust to new technologies. Innovations and standards are especially important for moving the business of LED solutions forward. Read more »
Technology | Aug 06, 2010
LED Failure Modes and Methods for Analysis
LED Failure Modes and Methods for Analysis LED’s open the way to new applications and markets in various different fields with a broad spectrum of requirements. Beneath other beneficial characteristics, in general, LED’s provide a high reliability, and a lifetime of more than 50;000 hours can be reached. Poor workmanship in manufacturing and unfavorable operational conditions may reduce the reliability significantly. To avoid failures or to achieve fast resolutions of existing problems a good knowledge of the failure mechanisms and suitable analytical methods is required. Objective of this article is to provide an overview of state of the art techniques in LED-Failure analysis. Read more »
Commentary | Apr 05, 2013
What is the Next Wave in Lighting - is it Purely Technology?
What is the Next Wave in Lighting - is it Purely Technology? Diversity makes lighting an exciting business. On the one hand you find people earning money with OLED doing one-off designs, then you have multi-billion Euro companies keeping their market share and reducing their workforce. How can this happen and what is next? Read more »
Commentary | Apr 27, 2012
LED Lighting Trends in 2012: The Rise of Lighting Solutions?
LED Lighting Trends in 2012: The Rise of Lighting Solutions? LEDs have already reached a sufficient “price/performance” level to enable massive adoption in LCD display applications. General Lighting applications will be the next and largest market for LED light sources. But the fact is that General Lighting can only take off if the cost/performance of LED based products can beat incumbent technologies. In that context, many of the lighting domain actors are developing new services in order to add innovation and value to Solid State Lighting, and differentiate them from traditional technologies. Will 2012 be the rise of Lighting Solutions? Read more »
Standardization + Regulation | Jun 04, 2012
Zhaga - Insights into the New LED Lighting “Standard” for Light Engines
Zhaga - Insights into the New LED Lighting “Standard” for Light Engines Greg Galluccio, Director of LED Business Development and Product Management for Lighting and Energy Solutions at Leviton and Zhaga spokesperson, talked to Siegfried Luger and Arno Grabher- Meyer from LED professional at the Light+Building in Frankfurt about the Zhaga LED lighting “Standard”. The industry initiative, Zhaga, will fundamentally influence the lighting business because of the interchangeability of LED light engines. Read more »
Technology | Dec 31, 1969
High Quality GaN Substrates for Modern LED Technology
High Quality GaN Substrates for Modern LED Technology It is well known that modern III-nitride based technologies for light emitting diode (LED) production include (as an initial inevitable step) the preparation of GaN templates. Such GaN templates are usually delivered on foreign substrates possessing high lattice mismatch with respect to GaN layers, e.g., sapphire or silicon carbide substrates. The growth of GaN layers on highly mismatched substrates occurs via the formation of 3D islands with their following coalescence [1]. Such growth mode results in an extremely high density of threading dislocations (TDs) up to 1010–1011 cm–2 in the layer interior [1]. These TDs are known as main sources for the deleterious performance of LEDs and other GaN based electronic and optoelectronic devices [2]. Therefore there exists an ultimate necessity in the developing of effective and low-cost recipes for low TD density GaN template manufacturing. Read more »
Technology | Aug 06, 2010
LED Source Modeling Method Evaluations
LED Source Modeling Method Evaluations Producing accurate simulations of LED based optical systems requires accurate source models. This means the source models must not only produce the correct distribution of light in a far field measurement, they must also produce the correct near field behavior since secondary LED optics are often employed in very close proximity to the LED. Accurate simulations are vital to the design process especially with lens optics commonly used on LEDs given the high cost and long lead times for lens tooling. The data presented in this paper is a direct result of the lessons learned by one manufacturer about the importance of simulation accuracy. Read more »
Technology | Dec 31, 1969
Measurement of LEDs
Measurement of LEDs Various new types of light emitting diodes (LEDs) are being developed and introduced for general illumination and other applications, and there are increasing needs for accurate measurements of various optical parameters of LEDs. Traditional standard lamps do not meet the calibration needs for LED measurements as LEDs differ substantially from traditional lamps in terms of physical sizes, flux levels, spectra, and spatial intensity distributions. Read more »
Interview | May 15, 2013
The Lighting Industry is Looking for a New Identity
The Lighting Industry is Looking for a New Identity Today, Siegfried Luger, publisher of LED professional, talked with Mr. Ed van den Kieboom, Conference Director Smart Lighting Event, and with Dr. Bruno Smets, Chair Conference Committee Smart Lighting Event, about the ongoing conference in Frankfurt. Read more »
White Paper | Technology | Oct 08, 2013
Two-Switch Flyback Solution for LED Street Lighting
Two-Switch Flyback Solution for LED Street Lighting LEDs provide high efficiency and long life compared to conventional lighting sources. Therefore, they are becoming first priority of lamp types to reduce energy consumption for internal or external lighting. This is also the case in street lightings where better efficiency and longer life are essential for less cost. A switching power supply designed to power up LED lamp should also have high efficiency and robustness to assure maintenance free lifetime as long as LED lamp. Resonant converters are one of the most popular power supply topologies here since their performance delivers increased power efficiency. LLC resonant converter has drawn attention thanks to its features such as high power conversion efficiency and low voltage stress on secondary rectifier. However, complicated design and high manufacturing cost of LLC resonant converters have been obstacles to fast time-to-market and cost reduction. Another problem of LLC resonant converter is large circulating current that is required to maintain zero voltage switching (ZVS). It causes relatively high power consumption at light load. LLC resonant converter also has potential failure issue when MOSFET with poor body diode performance is used. Two-switch flyback converter is proposed as an alternative solution to overcome the limitations of the LLC resonant converter. With additional switch on the high side, leakage inductance energy is clamped and recycled back to input to improve efficiency. The dissipative snubber circuit is no longer needed. A 120W rated switching power supply is designed utilizing two-switch flyback topology. The details of design specification and test results are presented. Read more »
Interview | Products, Materials + Tools | Nov 06, 2013
Lighting Innovation - Dialog Semiconductor Introduces New smarteXite Technology Platform for Intelligent LED Lighting
Lighting Innovation - Dialog Semiconductor Introduces New smarteXite Technology Platform for Intelligent LED Lighting Dialog Semiconductor plc, a provider of highly integrated power management, AC/DC, solid state lighting and short-range wireless technologies, announced its smarteXiteTM platform, enabling a new generation of highly flexible, programmable LED driver ICs for smart lighting applications. SmarteXite, based on fully configurable logic, is the first LED driver technology to directly and easily support wireless connectivity, light sensor control and allow easy integration into lighting control systems. Arno Grabher-Meyer and Siegfried Luger, both from LED professional, talked with Stefan Zudrell-Koch, Business Development Manager at Dialog Semiconductor, about their new technology platform. Read more »
Commentary | Jan 20, 2014
"Beyond LM Testing - A New Metric for Quality over Lifetime" by Thor Scordelis
"Beyond LM Testing - A New Metric for Quality over Lifetime" by Thor Scordelis In a recent blog post, the United States Department of Energy’s Jim Brodrick noted that solid-state lighting standards and testing methods “may not be glamorous, but they’re essential for the success of any technology, and SSL is no exception.” Certainly, this is true with respect to lumen quality, and for many years, the LM-80 standard, used to measure lumen maintenance of LED packages and modules, has sufficed. However, with the growing adoption of LED technology has come higher customer awareness and expectations. “Good enough” isn’t good enough anymore. Read more »
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