September 2010 Archives

Here's one not to miss. In conjunction with our 50th anniversary issue, Technology Editor Steve Bush has produced a history of the LED.

He begins:
Back in 1960 Electronics Weekly was born into a ferment of III-V semiconductor research that within two years would produce the first practical LED.

In 1960 Dr Nick Holonyak of General Electric was developing an unusual material, GaAsP, as a route to wide bandgap tunnel diodes.
Cree's ML-E 0.5W lighting LED is now available. The LED offers luminous flux of up to 58 lm at 150mA in 5,000K cool white and up to 48 lm in 3,000K warm white, writes Steve Bush.

"Like the MX-6 and MX-3 LEDs, the ML-E provides a controlled uniform angular chromaticity and a 120° viewing angle for distributed lighting," said Cree. "It also shares the same ANSI-compliant chromaticity binning used by the XP and MX families of LEDs."


The National Centre for III-V Technologies has received £10m to cover operations and research for the next five years from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), writes Steve Bush.

The University of Sheffield-based facility specialises in quantum lasers, their application, and fundamental physics research.

Quantum dot-based light emitters are one of the specialities, and research apparently includes the development of a sophisticated quantum dot LED that produces a broad band of wavelengths.

The spread of wavelengths, according to Houston, increases depth resolution  for medical scanning.

Read the full article >>
 
sleeved LED kit.jpgA bit different from the usual LED Luminaries post - we are venturing into the world of PC modding.

Check out the Sleeved LED Kit from NZXT, which is designed to add a dash of stylish LED lighting to your PC case.

Along a single cable, the LEDs let you "set the mood or mix and match with red, green, white, blue, or orange kits." Thanks to Slashgear for highlighting this one.
Check out this interesting article written by guest columnist Rafael Camarota, product line manager at Altera. He explains how designers can reduce power consumption in backlit LED and LCD displays. He begins:
12:00...12:00...12:00 - Everyone has seen a VCR blinking 12:00 24 hours a day. There are very few VCRs anymore, but millions of DVDs, DVRs, and STBs that have replaced them. Every one of these consumer components has an LED display or an LCD display with an LED backlight. Some still blinking 12:00.
Guest columnist Jeff Gruetter, product marketing engineer for power products at Linear Technology outlines why high brightness LEDs require high performance LED drivers...

High brightness (HB) white LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes) are quickly replacing incandescent lighting in many home, institutional, government and industrial applications.

In many cases, the higher efficiency of the LEDs reduces power consumption by as much as 88%, dramatically reducing carbon emissions required to generate the electricity to power them.
Cree has demonstrated 150mm SiC substrates with micropipe densities under 10/cm2, writes Technology Editor Steve Bush.

The firm's fundamental expertise is in SiC, and 100mm wafers of the material are the basis of its white GaN LED range, as well as certain power switching devices and RF power transistors.

LED Lighting guides

See also Electronics Weekly's roundup of content related to LEDs, with a special focus on both white LEDs and coloured LEDs, and Lighting LEDs.

* White LEDs

* Coloured LEDs

* LED Lighting (1)

* LED Lighting (2)

* LEDs General

* LED optics

* OLEDs

* LED heatsinking

* Costing LEDs

* 50 year history of the LED








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Author Profiles

Paul Ward
As Opto Product Manager at Farnell, Paul is overseeing the company's involvement in the rapidly evolving and high profile LED lighting market sector.

As well as ensuring that Farnell offers the latest technologies and products related to solid state lighting, Paul is also responsible for ensuring that the resources are in place to make it easier for design engineers to specify and design-in LED solutions for their applications.

Educated in Production Engineering and Design at Sheffield Hallam University, Paul has worked in various engineering, training and marketing roles for companies including C&K switches, ITT Cannon, Cherry and LED specialist Chicago Miniature Lighting.

Away from the world of LEDs, Paul is a Founder of the charity RTTW, Photographer and Harley Davidson rider; he has ridden and snapped across Europe, New Zealand and the USA on his chrome hog!

Gordon Routledge
Gordon Routledge is one of the original pioneers in LED illumination having worked with LEDs in illumination applications since 1996. Currently VP of Illumination at Dialight, Gordon founded Lumidrives in 2001, having previously been managing director at ACDC Lighting Systems. Gordon has a degree in Electrical & Electronic Engineering from university of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology.

Ian Bryant
ian bryant.jpgIan Bryant is Business Development Manager LED Division at Carclo Technical Plastics. He has worked on and off at Carclo (Formerly Combined Optical Industrial) since leaving school. He has worked through the company from Toolmaking to starting the company on the road of LED optics business some 6-7 years ago, starting with a standard range and more in line with the business of custom optics. In between all this he has worked in engineering and as a works Director for a hydraulics company but kept getting pulled back to the optics industrial. We are able to offer the full solution from idea to parts so have a very good understanding on what is needed. You will see some posts from our design team also under my name.

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This page is an archive of entries from September 2010 listed from newest to oldest.

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