Articles & Interviews

SoC Technologies in Lighting - Today’s Landscape and Tomorrow's Practices

A system-on-chip (SoC) quite suddenly became an important component in the lighting industry, fueling IoT innovation and opening new opportunities, while at the same time bringing disruption and new challenges. With rapid advancements in wireless communication, the impact of connected technologies on the lighting business will only keep increasing. This means deeper integration with SoCs and more attention from silicon vendors as they start competing for market share in this promising segment. But what is the current state of SoC design from the lighting perspective? Are chipmakers keeping up with the growing expectations for wireless lighting control solutions that are mature and truly reliable? When developing its complete Bluetooth software stack for professional lighting, Silvair worked with a number of different SoCs. Therefore, Piotr Winiarczyk, Wireless Solution Architect, and Szymon Rzadkosz might have found the answers to these questions. Read more »

Technologies | LpR Article

Solving the Phase-Cut Dimming Challenge

The evolution of dimmable LED lighting is an ongoing subject and phase-cut dimming is often dissatisfactory. While some weaknesses may be acceptable in residential applications, they are definitely not acceptable in professional applications. Stage lighting, studio lighting, TV and movie lighting set the highest standards. Craig Sharp and Bill Trzyna, Research & Design Engineers at CCI Power Supplies LLC discuss which developments helped to overcome limiting obstacles and led to a solution that also satisfies stringent requirements. Read more »

Resources | LpR Article | Applications | Horticulture | Mar 13, 2017

SSL Growth Strategies and USDA Corn Breeding Objectives

The SSL horticulture lighting industry has become one of the fastest growing branches of lighting worldwide. Much research has already been done in regards to horticultural SSL technology and continues to be rigorously explored. While most other inputs for plant growth are monitored and controlled based on plant needs, it is still common practice for light control to be rudimentary (on/off). Brandon Newkirk, Marketing Communications Manager at LumiGrow Inc., gives a short overview on the current state of dynamic LED lighting with a focus on USDA corn breeding trials and objectives. Read more »

Standardized Programming of Lighting Components Using NFC Technology

LpR 70 Article, page 88: NFC programming of LED drivers is rapidly gaining popularity as a fast, feature-rich, flexible and easy method to set the operating characteristics of LED drivers inside luminaires. Arnulf Rupp, Chair of MD-SIG, describes how the MD-SIG specification for NFC programming of lighting components makes it easy for luminaire manufacturers to use NFC programming in a production line where multiple brand drivers are used one after the other. Read more »

LpR Article | Jun 27, 2016

Status of Micro- and Nanostructured 3D LED Technologies

Conventional LEDs are planar, two-dimensional (2D) devices that emit light from a thin material layer at or near their flat surface. The vast majority of LEDs are made of GaN and InGaN material requiring expensive substrate wafers made of sapphire, silicon carbide or gallium nitride. The 3D WireLED technology uses silicon wafers for wafer diameters of 8 inches or larger. On each wafer, millions of vertical microwires and microrods of GaN are grown, each with a diameter of less than one micron. Mr. Arno Grabher-Meyer and Mr. Siegfried Luger from LED professional, talked with the General Manager of Aledia, Mr. Giorgio Anania about the status of this innovative technology. Read more »

Technologies | LpR Article

Street Lighting Evolution through LED Technology

Standard electronics is usually based on a relatively simple straight-forward technology. Outdoor lighting is more challenging in several aspects, especially robustness. This is also true for the electronics. Sandra Solán, R & D Manager from ELT Electronic Division has studied this technology in depth. To celebrate the IYL 2015 she will explain technical advances, benefits, strengths and technical challenges of current and future street lighting systems for an electronics manufacturer. Read more »

Resources | LpR Article | Technologies | Optics | Nov 28, 2016

Structured Glass Light Guides for Efficient Lighting

Glass injection molding technology (GIMT) for precision glass optics is a relatively new manufacturing technology. This expertise allows for producing efficient glass optics for LED lighting applications with special properties like undercut geometry or mounting flanges. A lot of progress has been made since it was introduced. Christian Passlick, Optical Engineer at Auer Lighting, shows how this improved technology supports making state-of-the-art light mixing structures for RGB/RGBW LED systems. Read more »

Swiss Photonics Workshop on Intelligent Efficient Solid State Lighting

Swiss Photonics held their Swiss Solid State Lighting Workshop in the Pantheon at Muttenz near Basel on December 12th of last year. The ambience of the automobile museum was perfect! The program covered a broad range of topics including Human Centric Lighting, Internet of Things and the results of the LASSIE project (Large Area Solid State Lighting Intelligent Efficient: A 7th Framework Program for Research and Technological Development). In the following article, Arno Grabher-Meyer, Editor-in-Chief at LED professional, summarizes the highlights. Read more »

Tech-Talks Bregenz | Interview | Nov 23, 2015

Tech-Talks BREGENZ - Andreas Weisl, SSC Europe, Vice-President

Seoul Semiconductor has more than 20 years of experience in semiconductor manufacturing and invests more than 10% of its annual revenue in LED research and development. On average, Seoul Semiconductor applies for more than 600 patents every year. Currently, the company holds more than 10,000 LED patents, including patents in core LED technologies such as Acrich, Acrich MJT, nPola, TV Direct Backlight Technology, UV, and many more. Seoul Semiconductor’s extensive patent portfolio in LED technology includes epitaxial growth, fabrication, packaging, and system application of LED technology. LED professional talked with Andreas Weisl, Vice-President of Seoul Semiconductor Europe GmbH about their business, technologies and solutions. Read more »

Tech-Talks Bregenz

Tech-Talks BREGENZ - Daniel Doxsee, Nichia Europe, Deputy Managing Director

Nichia is arguably the company with the longest history of manufacturing white LEDs. Recently, however, new competitors especially from China, have started challenging Nichia’s market share. Nichia’s role in strategic and technical solid-state lighting issues and its past, present and future were discussed with Daniel Doxsee, Nichia Chemical Europe’s Deputy Managing Director. Read more »

Resources | LpR Article | Tech-Talks Bregenz | Market | SSL

Tech-Talks BREGENZ - Dietmar Zembrot, LightingEurope, President

Rapidly growing technologies and emerging market trends in solid-state lighting encourage new innovations largely driven by applications and technological developments. Dietmar Zembrot, President of LightingEurope and Managing Director of TRILUX Group, shared his insights on changing value chains and business models, Europe’s competitiveness and the main driving forces for current SSL technologies. Read more »

Tech-Talks Bregenz | Jun 02, 2016

Tech-Talks BREGENZ - Dr. Biing-Jye Lee, Chairman of Epistar

Dr. Biing-Jye Lee, Chairman of Epistar, had a discussion with Siegfried Luger and Arno Grabher-Meyer from LED professional about the latest trends and the future of LED, Laser and Solid-State lighting technologies. He also gave them his view on how the markets and technologies will evolve. In addition, Dr. Lee shared some of the highlights from this year’s Light + Building as well as his view of current issues such as smart lighting, connectivity and new applications. Read more »

Health + Environment | Outdoor Applications | Resources | Tech-Talks Bregenz | Mar 25, 2019

Tech-Talks BREGENZ - Dr. Maja Grubisic, Researcher, Free University Berlin & Leibniz-Institute

Awareness of the ecological impact of technologies is becoming more important since climate change due to industrialization cannot be denied. LED lighting is one of the technologies that is deemed as a contributor in helping to reduce the impact caused by wasted energy. Unfortunately, light pollution, due to inefficient energy usage, is not the only problem. Besides the more recognized pollution from pesticides and chemical pollutants, light pollution also disturbs ecology and wildlife. Dr. Grubisic, Researcher at the Free University Berlin & Leibniz-Institute, has been working on this problem for more than five years now. She has written an article, also in this issue, concerning this. At the LED professional Symposium she was also good enough to grant this interview, providing some background information, explaining why light pollution is such an issue in biology and why this topic should be of concern to all of us. Read more »

Medical | Tech-Talks Bregenz | Resources | Health + Environment | Jul 29, 2019

Tech-Talks BREGENZ - Dr. Octavio Perez, Adjunctant Researcher, Mt. Sinai Hospital

Dr. Perez received the LED professional Scientific Award 2018 for his paper on "Light and ED Clinical Wellness and Performance Improvement", which was published in LpR 70. The evaluation jury had the following to say about why they selected his paper: "The paper is based on the clear definition of the research question, hypothesis and objective of the research. The methodology of the screening study is described in detail and both subjective and objective parameters have been measured. Although Emergency Department lighting is a very special application, the paper provides interesting results." This interview provides background information on Octavio Perez, his work in general, his opinion on human centric lighting risks, opportunities and applications and how he became involved in this interesting research topic. Dr. Perez also provides additional details about the presented paper. Read more »

Resources | LpR Article | Tech-Talks Bregenz | Light Conversion | Jan 26, 2017

Tech-Talks BREGENZ - Dr. Rubén D. Costa, Group Leader, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg

Light quality and costs of LED systems remain an important topic even though big improvements have been made. New approaches are always welcome and stir up hope. It was exactly a year ago that LED professional published the article by Dr. Rubén D. Costa, Liebig Group Leader at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, about his amazing new „Bio-Hybrid“ white LED approach. At LpS 2016 his presentation on the latest research results and improvements also won him the LpS 2016 Scientific Award. Consequently, we just had to invite him to a Tech-Talk Bregenz! In the interview below he gives us some interesting background information about why he started the project, how it works and what he expects in the future. He also gives us his views on LEDs and lighting in general. Read more »

Tech-Talks BREGENZ - Dr. Scott Wade, Technical & Certification Manager, DiiA

Dr. Scott Wade has been the Technical & Certification Manager for DALI/DiiA since 2013 and has been an industry expert member of the IEC62386 standardization team for about 14 years. He was invited to hold a lecture at the LpS 2018 about the founding of DiiA for the purpose of taking over the DALI trademark from ZVEI and discussed measures that were taken to further develop the standard and its certification process and make the DALI concept future proof with DALI-2. Read more »

Tech-Talks BREGENZ - Dr. Wilfried Pohl, Research Director, Bartenbach GmbH

Bartenbach is one of the pioneers in light planning and lighting research. Since Christian Bartenbach Senior founded the engineering office in 1976, the company has been dedicated to light and visual perception. Several lighting inventions made over the years, can be attributed to Bartenbach. Dr. Wilfried Pohl, as a member of the Managing Board and Director of Research at Bartenbach GmbH, has played a substantial role in many developments. LED professional talked with him about Bartenbach’s history, education in the lighting business, the lighting parameters he deems very important, the quality of light, "Human Centric Lighting" and "Biodynamic Lighting“, and how LEDs have changed the light planning and lighting research company, in general. Read more »

Tech-Talks Bregenz | Dec 01, 2015

Tech-Talks BREGENZ - Dr. Jy Bhardwaj, Lumileds, CTO

Dr. Jy Bhardwaj, CTO at Lumileds, held a keynote speech at the 5th LED professional Symposium +Expo (LpS 2015) on September 22nd in Bregenz. He talked about “Trends and Challenges for System Integration” and pointed out further steps and phases of how lighting technologies will evolve. Arno Grabher-Meyer and Siegfried Luger talked with Dr. Bhardwaj about his view on embedded lighting, color LED technologies, substrate and light source technologies. Read more »

Tech-Talks Bregenz

Tech-Talks BREGENZ - Ewing Liu, Everlight, Technical Marketing Manager

LED manufacturers have different strategies and approaches for their product portfolios depending on from which business they are originated. Everlight has a very long experience in optoelectronics as packaging company. Accompanied by Christopher Keusch, Director of Lighting Business EMEA, Ewing Liu, Technical Marketing Manager at Everlight, talks about about the background of the company, the worldwide strategies and upcoming techologies. Read more »

Tech-Talks Bregenz | Aug 09, 2016

Tech-Talks BREGENZ - Francis Wong, AVP Lighting Business Unit, Lextar

Francis Wong, Associate Vice President Lighting Business Unit at Lextar, visited the LED professional team for a Tech Talk in Bregenz after Light & Building 2016. Siegfried Luger, Arno Grabher-Meyer and Dr. Guenther Sejkora could discuss Lextar's history, current position, future orientation and strategies. Further exciting topics were the ongoing technology developments, the requirements on modern lighting systems, the latest lighting trends from Light & Building and the relevance of OLED and IoT technology for the company. Read more »

Tech-Talks Bregenz | Lp Article | Human Centric Lighting | Apr 22, 2018

Tech-Talks BREGENZ - Fred Maxik, Founder & CTO, Lighting Science Group

LED light in combination with advanced controls, and here especially IoT capabilities, opened several new options in lighting. In this context, the term Human Centric Lighting, and more recently, the term Biologically Active Light have become trendy. Fred Maxik, founder and CTO of the Lighting Science Group, who held the keynote speech at LpS 2017, recognized these opportunities in a very early stage when most other manufacturers were still struggling with the challenges of the new technology. In the interview he explains what his perception of light is and its importance in our lives. He gives insights into his philosophy and ideas on which criteria artificial lighting has to fulfill in order to live up to the promising terms „Human Centric Lighting“ and „Biologically Active Light“. Read more »

Tech-Talks BREGENZ - Jamie Singerman, Future Lighting Solutions

We recently sat down with Jamie Singerman, Worldwide Corporate Vice President, and Patrick Durand, Technical Director for Future Lighting Solutions, a leading provider of Solid-State Lighting technologies, engineering expertise and online simulation and design tools, to discuss the company’s differentiators and their views on the ever changing lighting market. Read more »

Resources | Tech-Talks Bregenz | Research | Light Generation | Jan 15, 2018

Tech-Talks BREGENZ - Julia Frohleiks, Researcher, University of Duisburg-Essen

In his commentary on technical progress and innovation, Dr. Sejkora said: “In the early stage, in the first phase of its life cycle, technology is mainly driven by fundamental research.” He went on to say that we can never predict how a technology will develop. Researchers from the University of Duisburg-Essen, working in the Nano Energy Technical Center (NETZ), worked on this type of fundamental technology and their submission received the LpS 2017 Scientific Award. Ms. Julia Frohleiks, a Ph.D. student, was a major contributor to this research in the group led by Dr. Ekaterina Nannen and accepted the award in Dr. Nannen’s name. In the following interview she gives some background information and discloses future research possibilities. Read more »

Resources | Tech-Talks Bregenz | Laser Technology | Dec 16, 2019

Tech-Talks BREGENZ - Julian Carey, Marketing Manager at SLD Laser

In 2016, Nobel Laureate, Professor Shuji Nakamura held a key note speech at LpS. As the founder of Soraa and SLD Laser, he named laser lighting as the next, innovative step and disruption in lighting. He emphasized the need to focus on light quality and the tailoring of LED lighting to the natural needs of humas, providing light that mimics sunlight as closely as possible. It was therefore self-evident that LED professional would invite Julian Carey, the Product and Technical Marketing Manager at SLD Laser, for a Tech-Talk when he was at the LpS 2018 in Bregenz. We asked him for an update on the status of laser lighting, business strategies and future prospects and how laser lighting has developed since Professor Nakamura's statements in 2016. Read more »

Tech-Talks Bregenz | Apr 14, 2016

Tech-Talks BREGENZ - Karl Jónsson, IoT Architect, Tridonic

Karl Jónsson, IoT Architect at Tridonic presented some interesting facts, figures, and ideas about IoT and the future of lighting in his speeches about “The Internet of Things and Lighting” at Zumtobel’s International Year of Light Event in 2015 and again at the Light + Building 2016 preview. LED professional got the chance to talk with him about his visions for IoT and Tridonic’s latest developments in that domain. Read more »

Resources | Tech-Talks Bregenz | Security | IoT | Jul 20, 2018

Tech-Talks BREGENZ - Ken Munro, Partner & Founder, Pen Test Partners

Today, hardly a day goes by that we don’t hear about security breaches, hacker attacks or comprimized data; often as a result of insufficient security measures. IoT does not really improve this situation and it is therefore necessary for the industry to take this threat seriously. This is especially true for the lighting industry, whose aim is to become the IoT enabler. Ken Munro, founder and partner at Pen Test Partners, is an ethical hacker whose passion is to hack any technical product he can get his hands on. Unfortunately, he succeeds way to often. LED professional talked with him about ethical hacking, where he sees the risks in various products, where the risks are hidden and what can be done to minimize them. Read more »

Resources | LpR Article | Tech-Talks Bregenz | Quantum Dots | Oct 31, 2017

Tech-Talks BREGENZ - Ken T. Shimizu, Research & Development Director, Lumileds

QDs have been a hot topic in lighting for a while already, but up until now they haven’t been adopted on a large scale in lighting. The adoption began in display devices because some of the technical issues were of less concern in this application. With continuing development, QDs are now also becoming interesting for general lighting applications. Ken Shimizu, Director of Novel Technologies and Devices, Research and Development at Lumileds, attended the LpS in Bregenz and made a presentation about the company’s QD technology. In this interview he gives some background information about the QD program and future steps. Read more »

Tech-Talks Bregenz

TechTalks BREGENZ - An Initiative for the "International Year of Light and Light Based Technologies 2015"

Luger Research e.U., publisher of LED professional, is starting an exciting activity for the Year of Light 2015 and the Day of Photonics on October 21st 2014: A series of 4-6 top-level meetings per year with the most important and innovative players in the LED/OLED technologies global market place. Read more »

Tech-Talks Bregenz | Jun 16, 2014

Tech-Talks BREGENZ: Martina Paul, General Secretary, CIE (Article published in LpR #43)

With the rise of LEDs as the future lighting technology, the relatively stable lighting industry faces many changes and challenges. One of the main challenges is the ever increasing speed of transitions, something already seen in the semiconductor business. Standardization organizations are facing similar challenges. On the one hand they should define standards that will last as long as possible and on the other hand the standards need to be as clear and precise as possible. Martina Paul, Secretary General of the most important standardization body, the International Commission on Illumination (CIE) was invited to the Tech-Talks BREGENZ to discuss these topics. Read more »

Tech-Talks BREGENZ - Norman Bardsley, President of Bardsley Consulting

Professor of Physics, Dr. J. Norman Bardsley, has become an internationally recognized expert in SSL through his activities as an advisor for DoE and ISA. Dr. Bardsley has a profoundly deep knowledge and understanding of OLED technology, which includes the manufacturing thereof, cost structures and research activities. LED professional talked with him about the different aspects of OLED lighting technology and asked for his thoughts on future perspectives. Read more »