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TEL AVIV, ISRAEL & COLOGNE, GERMANY: The Standards Institution of Israel (SII) and TUV Rheinland have reached an agreement on strategic cooperation. In this co-operation, the focus will be on testing and certification of electric products and components destined for the Israeli and global marketplace under the CB Scheme of the Worldwide System for Conformity Testing and Certification of Electrotechnical Equipment and Components (IECEE).

Both parties hope for major synergies to emerge notably with regard to activities for the Israeli market and international projects, centred, for instance on renewable sources of energy.

Ralf Wilde, Executive Vice President Products and Systems at TUV Rheinland, said: “Through the cooperation with SII as a highly esteemed partner in Israel we are able to expand our range of Market Access services to serve another important country. This, in turn, is sure to benefit our globally oriented customers particularly those from North America, Asia and Europe.”

TAIPEI, TAIWAN: Testar Electronics Corp., specialists in testing and optimizing Light Emitting Diode (LED) chips and a subsidiary of Chroma ATE Inc., has signed definitive agreements to become an independent entity and to receive an institutional investment from WI Harper Group.

This infusion of capital allows the three-year old subsidiary to expand its operations and further establish its leadership role in providing testing services for LED chip manufacturers across Asia.

“We recognized early on that LED chip manufacturers have limited testing capability and must comply with evolving standards. By outsourcing LED testing, customers benefit from increased efficiency and improved quality, ensuring that manufacturers can achieve competitive prices for their high-grade chips.”

The ever-increasing demand for energy efficient and cost effective lighting is driving the rapid growth of LEDs to support a range of applications such as LCD-TV backlighting, laptop PC and computer screen backlighting and general illumination. Industry analyst iSuppli projects shipments of LEDs to nearly triple over the next three years from 63 billion in 2010 to 166 billion in 2013.

This proliferation of LED-related products is creating a new professional services sector: LED chip testing. “LEDs are now used in street lighting, consumer electronics such as backlit TVs, vehicles and numerous unique applications,” said Leo Huang, founder, CEO and chairman of Chroma and founder of Testar Electronics.

“We recognized early on that LED chip manufacturers have limited testing capability and must comply with evolving standards. By outsourcing LED testing, customers benefit from increased efficiency and improved quality, ensuring that manufacturers can achieve competitive prices for their high-grade chips.”

“Testar is ideally positioned to take advantage of the vast business opportunity in LED testing services,” said Peter Liu, Chairman of WI Harper Group. “The insatiable demand for LEDs is placing pressure on chip manufacturers to increase throughput and Testar plays a critical role in this strategic market.” Testar continues WI Harper’s LED investment program that includes LED chip maker SemiLEDs Corp. and LED emitter, light engine and fixture provider NeoPac Lighting Group.

EL SEGUNDO, USA: Efficient Power Conversion Corp. (EPC) has introduced a family of enhancement mode power transistors based on its proprietary gallium nitride on Silicon technology.

Spanning a range of 40 Volts to 200 Volts, and 4 milliohms to 100 milliohms, these power transistors demonstrate significant performance advantages over state-of-the-art silicon-based power MOSFETs. EPC’s technology produces devices that are smaller than similar resistance silicon devices and have many times superior switching performance.

Applications that benefit from this newly available performance are DC-DC power supplies, point-of-load converters, Class-D audio amplifiers, notebook and netbook computers, LED drive circuits, telecom base stations and cell phones, to name just a few.

EPC’s enhancement mode (normally OFF) GaN technology was explicitly developed to replace power MOSFETs. The products are produced in a standard silicon CMOS foundry on 150mm (6 inch) silicon wafers. The use of this low-cost infrastructure has allowed EPC to price the initial product offerings aggressively in order to accelerate the conversion from silicon power MOSFETs.

This new technology is ready for commercial use. EPC has posted to its web site, www.epc-co.com, results from the most extensive reliability testing ever performed on GaN power devices as well as a battery of application notes, SPICE models, demo boards and development kits.

Alex Lidow, EPC’s co-founder and CEO, said: “EPC’s GaN on silicon power transistors represent the first major breakthrough in power conversion technology since the development of the commercial power MOSFET. We have developed a very cost effective and reliable technology that is also very easy for anyone with power MOSFET experience to use in a way that will significantly boost their power management system performance.”

The product is priced between $0.80 and $5.00 in 1k quantities and is immediately available through Digi-Key.

SHELTON, USA: Johnson Electric announced the first of many new electronically commutated (EC) motors that are under development. This new brushless DC motor product line is designed for high efficiency, long life and precision détente torque performance in critical HVAC valve and damper control applications.

The HVAC valve motor product line comes in two versions, low détente torque and high détente torque in three packages, 24mm, 30mm and 38mm diameter. The low détente torque motors are for spring-return applications, while the high détente torque versions are for non-spring return applications.

A key feature of this product line is highly stable détente torque over time, even in a high temperature and high humidity environment. This motor performance level is achieved by an innovative magnetic design and a unique mechanical structure utilizing precision components throughout.

“This motor product line is designed to meet the highest requirements of the leading players in the building automation and HVAC industries,” said Jim Dick, Johnson Electric’s senior vice president of Strategic Marketing. “This motor family’s détente torque reliability makes it perfect for safety critical applications,” he added.

The product line will bear a new Johnson Electric symbol to indicate it is an Eco motion solution. The symbol on the green leaf is the Greek letter Eta, meaning efficiency, enclosed by a circle to represent motion.

THIEF RIVER FALLS, USA: Electronic components distributor Digi-Key Corp., recognized by design engineers as having the industry’s broadest selection of electronic components available for immediate shipment, has signed a deal for the global distribution of gallium nitride (GaN)-based power management devices from EPC.

Established in 2007, EPC is a fabless company with subcontract manufacturing in Taiwan. EPC’s key markets include voltage controllers, LED boost converters, power MOSFET and IGBT replacements, drivers, power amplifiers and RF MOSFETs.

EPC’s founders are committed to developing GaN products to be used as cost-effective silicon product replacements. In June 2009, EPC released the first commercial enhancement-mode GaN transistors. EPC has developed products with behavioral characteristics similar to silicon power MOSFETs to make GaN transistors easy to use.

EPC’s products for applications requiring 200V or less are available for purchase on Digi-Key’s global websites. Additionally, these parts will be featured in future print and online catalogs.

“Digi-Key has the fastest global logistics and the most efficient supply chain of any distributor with which I have worked over the last 30 years,” said Alex Lidow, EPC’s co-founder and CEO. “This will translate into fast and easy service to all our global customers who want to gain access to our enhancement-mode GaN transistors to replace their less-efficient power MOSFETs.”

“EPC’s gallium nitride-based power management products bring intriguing next-generation breakthrough benefits to existing MOSFET and Bipolar solutions,” said Dave Doherty, Digi-Key’s vice president of semiconductor product. “We are thrilled to be the first to offer these innovative products to the engineering community.”