The company says that the new display requires just half the power compared to the company’s current color displays of the same brightness,. It is fully compatible with eMagin’s entire VGA, SVGA, XGA, SXGA and WUXGA product line.

The company's display technology enables optical solutions for head-mounted display applications requiring full color including: augmented vision/reality products used in simulation & training devices, and medical, maintenance and process-control ‘see-through’ data glasses and safety goggles.

eMagin will be demonstrating the Color OLED-XLS for the first time at next week’s Society for Information Display being held at the Vancouver Convention Center. Engineering samples are available immediately with fully qualified production units expected by the fourth quarter 2013.

“Our clients have been asking us to push the known limits in order to create more versatile color microdisplays that are both visible in bright environments and power efficient. We have met and surpassed both requirements with the development of the Color OLED-XLS,” said Andrew G. Sculley, president and CEO of eMagin Corporation. “This technology will enable indoor and outdoor augmented reality headsets for commercial, military and industrial use. We are well on the way to OLED microdisplays that can be even brighter for aircraft heads-up displays and consumer data glasses.”

The company claims that this puts QLEDs near the fundamental efficiency limit of the technology which the company says is 20 percent for quantum dots.These results are two times higher efficiency than previously reported state-of-the-art efficiency of a QLED device. QD Vision says its current and luminous power efficiency are better than the best evaporated OLED result of the same color coordinate, and significantly better than what solution-processed OLEDs have thus far achieved.

In comparison, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) recently reported 11 percent external quantum efficiency for a blue organic light emitting diode (OLED) at 800 cd/m2. However Phosphor-based OLEDs are apparently not included in the company's comparison statement.

“This paper clearly demonstrates the fundamental efficiency advantage that QLEDs have over any other emissive display technology. Achieving this milestone is a great breakthrough and the result of years of hard work and dedication to achieving what others may have thought impossible,” said QD Vision co-founder Seth Coe-Sullivan.

While at an earlier stage of development and commercialization than QD Vision’s Color IQTM products, QD Vision says that its QLED performance is already suitable for use in certain products that require precision color solutions in an ultra-slim form factor, including monochrome visible and infrared displays, and lighting devices for machine and night vision applications.

The new display, which measures approximately 30 feet high by 48 feet wide, features a 15 millimeter pixel layout. It incorporates excellent image clarity and contrast, multiple levels of protection from the elements and a robust cabinet design.

The display can show one large image to highlight live video and instant replays, and can also be divided into separate windows to show a variety of vivid graphics, colorful animations, up-to-the-minute statistics, scoring information and sponsor advertisements, all with what the company describes as outstanding brightness and wide-angle visibility.

Daktronics DakStats® software is included with the installation for managing game, season and career statistics. It delivers and tracks statistics and provides in-depth statistical reports for all levels of play, from high school to professional. Daktronics’ contends that its national statistical leader board is a valuable product that no other company offers.

“The City of Cedar Rapids and the Cedar Rapids Kernels have been a long-time partner of Daktronics and we are excited about the opportunity to continue our partnership with this new display installation,” said Matt Warnke, Daktronics sales representative. “The new 15HD display provides an even greater fan experience for fans of the Kernels and Veterans Memorial Stadium.”

Daktronics boasts that its LED video and messaging display technology offers a long lifetime with minimal maintenance and low power consumption, providing value and excitement for years to come.

While improving the IQE of UV epitaxial wafers is a long-term prospect, Verticle contends that an alternative way to boost the overall output of a UV-LED is to drive more current into the UV-LEDs, and manage the resulting heat. The company states that heat-related droop is more of an issue in UV-LEDs than in blue, and therefore, the company reasons, one of the main challenges of UV LEDs is lowering junction temperature.

In order to operate at higher current injection conditions and dissipating heat more efficiently, Verticle’s UV-LED chip is constructed with a copper substrate. As shown in the accompanying image that contains both graphs, Cu base vertical chip’s thermal resistance (Rth) is 2K/W lower than GaN/Si vertical chip. As a result, junction temperature (Tj) of GaN/Cu is lower than GaN/Si. It is noted that the junction temperature difference is 2 degrees C at 350 mA current injection between two chips, however, the difference become larger (6 degrees C) at 1A current injection.

The company points to testing it conducted that shows that a vertical Cu-base UV-LED chip has higher radiant flux than a lateral chip fabricated with same epitaxial wafer. Furthermore, Verticle says that its UV-LED chip on a Cu substrate can be driven at a higher current than other vertical chips constructed with different substrate materials. For example, the company says that Verticle’s GaN/Cu UV-LED chip does not saturate over 1A, while GaN/sapphire UV-LED chip start to saturate after 500mA. This suggests that a GaN/Cu chip has higher heat dissipation capability compared with GaN on other substrates, giving Verticle’s Cu-base UV-LED chip distinct advantages for applications in which high current injection and good thermal properties are required.

Verticle’s hexagonal UV-LED chip’s (45 Mil size) radiant fluxes are measured at 416mW at 350mA current injection, 787mW at 700mA, and 1025mW at 1A for the 392 nm wavelength, respectively. In addition, the company notes that it's hexagonal "Honeycomb" chip shape offers a higher extraction efficiency when packaged with a circular lens as a result of the near circular beam profile.

The first OLED products using rigid glass tiles are already on the market. However, OLEDs have also been produced and demonstrated (at least in the lab) on plastic films to create flexible light sources. It is expected that eventually, Flexible OLEDs could be produced at lower cost than glass-based OLEDs. Flexible OLEDs could be embedded into most kinds of everyday objects.

While flexible OLEDs have been successfully demonstrated in the laboratory scale by many groups (including CSEM), the Flex-o-Fab project aims to take them from lab to fab through the development of reliable processes for manufacturing OLEDs on plastic foils. The project will reportedly set up a modular, integrated pilot production line and associated manufacturing chain to achieve this. The Flex-o-Fab project will migrate existing sheet-to-sheet processes to roll-to-roll (R2R) production for a further reduction of costs and to enable high-volume production. The project will focus on lighting applications. The project participants hope to have a proof-of-concept pilot line operational by September 2015.

In collaboration with a range of partners, CSEM will contribute to develop new bonding-debonding solutions to facilitate reliable manufacturing of flexible OLEDs based on “foil on carrier” concept. The solutions developed will be compatible with the complete OLED processing flow. This will eventually provide the consortium with a reliable and roll-to-roll compatible handling method for OLED processing on polymer foils.

Adaptive forward lighting, which is glare-free camera-controlled headlamps that react instantly, will help drivers even more in the future thanks to additional intelligent functions. This functionality requires the integration of microelectronics and optoelectronics. Osram is contributing its expertise as the project coordinator and market leader in LED lighting for the automotive sector.

This framework can provide the basis for adaptive forward lighting systems (AFS) that will offer drivers and passengers increased safety. The design of adaptive lighting will come for example from glare-free high-beam, and low-beam that adapts to the speed of the vehicle. At high speed the range of the light is automatically increased. In city traffic, a wider distribution of the light can help illuminate more of the sidewalk and margins. These functions will be fully electronic so there is no need for mechanical actuators.

Osram’s Specialty Lighting division will be developing new electronic control gear for controlling the LED headlamp system. The Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration (IZM) is contributing its expertise in interconnection technology and materials, and Infineon Technologies is offering its experience in automotive electronics and LED drivers. The automotive industry supplier and lighting specialist HELLA KGaA Hueck & Co. will develop the entire optical system for the LED module and the headlamps, and will build prototypes. Daimler, an engineering company in the automotive sector, will carry out the vehicle tests.

Project coordinator Stefan Grötsch is responsible for LED applications in automotive lighting at Osram Opto Semiconductors. Grötsch said, “We have brought together major-league players in their respective sectors, assembling a wealth of expertise for this pioneering project around one table.” The project is being sponsored by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (FMER) under reference number 13N12510 and is scheduled to run from February 1, 2013 to January 31, 2016.

An analyst from TechNavio's Hardware team said, ''One of the major trends in the Global Packaged GaN LED market is rapid technological advances. The continuous technological advancement has increased the number of applications in which packaged GaN LEDs are used. Furthermore, these advances have enabled packaged GaN LED vendors to deliver high-quality output for customers. The technological advancement has resulted in the development of advanced, compact, and power-efficient packaged GaN LEDs that can be deployed in a wide range of applications.''

Peoples Daily cited 21cbh.cn, which said that Sanan Optoelectronics received government subsidies totaling 328 million yuan ($53.3 million) in 2012, 805 million yuan in 2011 and 2.53 million yuan in 2010. These subsidy amounts reportedly accounted for 40.5 percent, 85 percent and 60.4 percent of its net profits respectively during these years.

According to People's Daily, Elec-Tech would likely have suffered losses in 2010 and 2012 if it weren't for subsidies.

One result of the reduced subsidies is that the pace of LED price drops is expected to slow down. Taiwan-based LED chip makers noted that prices for LEDs have fallen about 35 percent in the last two years, according to Digitimes.

Sanan, a leader in China's LED industry, has reportedly chosen to be less aggressive in its price cuts, likely because of the reduced subsidies.

Digitimes noted that with prices stabilizing, TV backlighting demand returning and the lighting market growing, Taiwan-based firms are likely to see strong performance in the second and third quarter of 2013.