Welcome to the LEDs Magazine News & Insights newsletter for July 24, 2020. I realize this sentiment is only applicable to a minority of the people that might be reading this newsletter, most of whom live in the US, but... Something feels a little bit more normal in this pandemic era with baseball on TV last night.
On to our industry and maybe a justification for my baseball reference. We’ve essentially announced our list of all stars. After teasing the initiative multiple times, we posted our inaugural list of 40 Under 40 honorees yesterday. The cover story in our July/August issue will feature more information on this next generation of leaders across the LED and solid-state lighting (SSL) sectors. That issue will be available in our digital magazine platform today.
It was my first time working on an initiative such as 40 Under 40. While it was a lot of work, it was also very instructive. I discovered pockets of technology across the span of LED components to lighting design that I previously knew nothing about. And some of you who nominated class members were extremely passionate about your candidates, with a number of the honorees receiving multiple nominations and compelling essays to support those nominations. Thank you to all who participated. And congratulations to the Class.
As for other news, I was somewhat taken aback this week when I got a story pitch on packaged LEDs that radiate outside the visual range from Ushio. Anyone who reads my columns knows that we are being inundated with ultraviolet (UV) news from every direction and Ushio is a major player in UV lamps. But the pitch I mentioned was not about UV but rather about short-wavelength infrared (SWIR) LEDs.
The SWIR LED story is a familiar one. An evolving semiconductor technology is advancing in power output and efficiency while costs are dropping. Soon the SSL technology will usurp the market occupied by legacy sources and Ushio has just such technology in the Epitex D-Series of LEDs. Again I learn something new. The application space for SWIR LEDs is far broader than I imagined. I think we need a feature article on the topic. Stay tuned.
Also, I want to again mention a horticultural story that we featured in our HortiCann newsletter yesterday. Maybe I just wanted to try out another addition to my vocabulary. I wrote about a company from Israel called Vertical Field. Think about the name and you might be able to infer their horticultural focus. They sell vertical farms and automated systems to control the growing operation. But their farms are geoponic in nature. Look it up if you don’t know what it means. I had to.
Meanwhile, we are getting ready to release more details on the speakers for our HortiCann Light + Tech event. Attend virtually Oct. 20–21.
You will find many more stories of interest in the body of today’s newsletter. And always feel free to contact me to discuss content we post or to pitch a contributed article.
- Maury Wright, (858) 748-6785, [email protected]