Square Roots, a controlled environment agriculture (CEA) startup, recently introduced a groundbreaking program supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The program aims to demonstrate the feasibility of removing light from commercial indoor vertical farming by utilizing gene-edited (CRISPR) plants that grow heterotrophically. These plants can add biomass through carbon uptake from acetate [...]

South Korean researchers have demonstrated a new approach to LiFi using a red, green, and blue (RGB) OLED array. The Pohang University of Science and Technology team utilized an organic photodiode (OPD) array as the receiver. Their study was published October 19, 2023, in the publication, Advanced Materials. The new approach to LiFi reduced interference [...]

The U.S. DOE Lighting R&D Program has two open funding opportunities: The SBIR Program is looking to fund development of Advanced Lighting Fixtures, horticultural lighting, and germicidal UV solutions. Letters of intent for the SBIR are due Jan. 3. The DOE also has the BENEFIT FOA with concept papers due 12/18/23. SBIR link. The BENEFIT FOA [...]

  LightNOW has recently covered advances in green aluminum, copper, and textiles. There has now been a large advancement in creating more environmentally friendly glass. Researchers at Penn State University have created what they’re calling LionGlass, a new type of glass that cuts the carbon footprint in half and increases the strength by ten fold. [...]

The Nobel Prizes awarded, this month, in both Chemistry and Physics had some things in common. Both involved scientific breakthroughs involving light, as well as distance scales so small that quantum mechanical behavior is essential to understand the science. Moungi G. Bawendi, Louis E. Brus and Alexei I. Ekimov were awarded the Nobel Prize in [...]

  New research by Assistant Professor of Physics Xiao-Feng Qian, at the Stevens Institute of Technology has linked two separate fields of physics: Coherence Optics and Classical Mechanics. It introduces a universal relationship between the polarization of light and its entanglement properties. A new quantitative relationship between certain quantum properties of light are connected and [...]

  Scientists from Fishtek Marine, a manufacturer of sustainable fishing gear, had a surprise discovery. Bright lights that they added to crab pots to catch more crabs instead attracted loads of scallops. The scallops swam into the traps to get to the lights. Traditional scallop fishing involves dredging the bottom of the ocean, causing considerable [...]

  I’ve previously written about China’s gallium export ban not impacting current global gallium supplies here. I’ve also written about the recent 2023 DOE Critical Materials Assessment, here. A deeper look at the Critical Materials Assessment shows the LED industry might be in for a rough ride. The majority of white light LEDs are made [...]

Researchers at Aalto University in Finland have achieved a new milestone in wireless charging. Efficiency had always dropped dramatically as the distance between wireless power transmitter and receive increased. The Aalto researchers, however, achieved 80+% efficiency at a distance of 7” between the transmitter and receiver antennas. To do this, the team developed a new [...]