Researchers at Purdue University have overcome a major obstacle in reducing the cost of "solid state lighting," a technology that could cut electricity consumption by 10 percent if widely adopted.

BluGlass, an Australian company that has developed low-cost manufacturing technology for growing GaN-based material for LEDs, has opened its new headquarters and demonstration plant at Silverwater, Sydney.

Solar-powered LED technology provider Carmanah Technologies Corporation has partnered with Encom Wireless Data Solutions Inc. to add a wireless interface capability to its line of stand-alone solar-powered traffic beacons.

...In order to beat their Korean rivals and regain past glory as global leaders in the display segment, leading Japanese display makers recently formed a united front with support from the Japanese government. Sony, Sharp, Toshiba and Panasonic joined forces in the development of technology for the mass production of larger-sized AM OLED panels over 40 inches financed by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.

Matsushita Electric Industrial has informally decided to build a lithium-ion battery plant in Suminoe Ward, Osaka, that will be the largest such plant in the world, it has been learned. The plant will be built at a cost of more than 100 billion yen on a site near Osaka Bay that was formerly occupied by a thermal power station of the Kansai Electric Power. Matsushita Battery Industrial, a Matsushita Electric subsidiary, will commence production at the plant in fiscal 2010 at the earliest, according to sources.

Aquest Systems confirmed Thursday that on July 9 it sent Asyst Technologies an offer to buy the chip manufacturing equipment maker for US$6.50 per share in cash. Privately held Aquest, which is based in Sunnyvale, CA is a developer of automation technologies for the semiconductor industry.

AMD has announced that its board of directors elected president and COO Dirk Meyer as the company's CEO. Meyer succeeds Hector Ruiz, who will become executive chairman of AMD and chair of the board of directors.

Numbers concerning counterfeiting vary from source to source, as do the suggested ways to defend the electronics supply chain against these fake components. In late 2007, the US Patent and Trademark Office estimated that counterfeiting and piracy drain about US$250 billion out of the US economy each year along with some 750,000 jobs...

The Linde Group offers a unique solution to replace the powerful greenhouse gas nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) used in the production of LCDs and solar panels.

New solutions such as ultra-thin top silicon and ultra-thin Buried OXide (BOX) give device architects and designers complete flexibility in their choice of substrates for partially depleted (PD) and fully-depleted (FD) devices, including multi-gate transistor architectures (FinFET, Trigate). The advanced substrates support applications and architectures on the industry's sub-45 nm roadmap (and)...to make strategic choices for 32 nm and beyond, Soitec customers now have a full range of options at their disposal...

...In tests with TI the CC2591 has boosted outdoor range for a Zigbee radio as much as ten-fold to 1.5 miles. The chip integrates a group of mainly passive components including a power amplifier, low-noise amplifier, balun, switches, inductors and RF-matching devices.