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Nobel prizes

Lightbulb moment for Nobel

physicists: prize awarded for
inventing blue LEDs
One laureate paid just $200 for invention that
allows energy-efficient lighting and could save
quarter of worlds electricity

Ian Sample, science editor

Follow @iansample Follow @guardian
The Guardian, Tuesday 7 October 2014 18.18 BST
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Shuji Nakamura with a blue laser, one application of his co-invention.

His work was valued at $500m in 2001 he was offered $200. Photo:
Randall Lamb/UCSB/EPA

A scientist whose project was deemed so hopeless that

he had to pursue it in his spare time has won the 2014
Nobel prize in physics for an invention that paved the
way for widespread energy-efficient lighting.
Shuji Nakamura, 60, at the University of California,
Santa Barbara, shares the coveted prize and 8m
Swedish kronor (690,000) with Isamu Akasaki and
Hiroshi Amano of Japan for the invention of efficient
blue light-emitting diodes which has enabled bright and
energy-saving white light sources.
Speaking to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences,
which woke him in California with a 3am phone call,
Nakamura said over a crackling line that receiving the
prize was amazing and unbelieveable. The three

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Lightbulb moment for Nobel physicists: prize awarded for inventing blue LEDs | Scie... Page 2 of 6

scientists will receive their award at a ceremony in

Stockholm in December.

inventors of blue
light-emitting
diodes
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Isamu Asaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura are announced as

Nobel prize-winners for their invention of the blue LED light. Asaki
takes a phone call from the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe,
congratulating him on their success

The invention of the blue LED transformed lighting. The

devices can be used with a phosphor or combined with
red and green LEDs to generate white light for
illuminating homes and offices, traffic signals and huge
advertising screens. They are so efficient that if the UK
switched over to LED lighting, the nation could save
10% of its electricity bill and do without or eight new
power stations, said Sir Colin Humphrey, director of
research at Cambridge University.
Its so well deserved, Humphrey told the Guardian.
Based on this bright blue LED you can make white
LEDs and those are becoming widespread all over the
world for solid state lighting. This is going to save lots of
energy. About a quarter of the worlds electricity is
used for lighting.
Conventional lightbulbs are inefficient because they
work by heating up a wire filament. The hot filament
produces light, but wastes substantial amounts of
energy through lost heat. Fluorescent lamps are better,
but do not come close to the efficiency of white LEDs.
In an LED, light is produced when negative electrons
combine with positive holes in wafer-thin layers of
semiconductors. Red LEDs became widely available in
the 1960s and adorned calculators and digital watches
through the 1970s. Green LEDs were developed
around the same time.
But despite these early successes, scientists failed for
decades in their attempts to create blue LEDs. These
were crucial though if white LED lighting was ever to
become a reality: only blue light which has the highest
visible frequencies can be converted into white light.

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Why blue LEDs are so important and the significance of the

breakthrough

The stumbling block was that no one had a way to grow

and modify crystals of a material called gallium nitride,
which the laureates believed could be coaxed into
producing blue light. In 1986, two of the prize winners,
Akasaki, 85, at Meijo and Nagoya universities, and
Amano, 54, at Nagoya University, cracked the problem
by growing the material on sapphire coated with
aluminium nitride. Six years and countless failed
experiments later, they revealed their first LED that
emitted bright blue light.
Nakamura, meanwhile, was working at a small
Japanese firm called Nichia Corporation when he
solved the same problem by growing the first layer of
gallium nitride at a low temperature, and adding further
layers at higher temperatures. He worked in his own
time, because the task was considered as hopeless by
his employer. In 1992, Nakamura made another major
breakthrough that showed how gallium nitride layers
could be modified to carry the positive holes needed to
make blue LEDs work.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/oct/07/lightbulb-moment-nobel-physicists-... 10/14/2014

Lightbulb moment for Nobel physicists: prize awarded for inventing blue LEDs | Scie... Page 4 of 6

Nakamuras efforts did not impress his bosses as much

as they might have done. In 2001, he sued Nichia after
they gave him just $200 for developing blue LEDs.
Estimating that the invention was worth more than
$500m (then 350m) to the company, a court ordered
Nichia to pay him $200m. The firm appealed against the
decision and Nakamura reluctantly accepted $8m in
2005.
They didnt approve of his work, they thought it was
going nowhere. So he did his work in secret. He did his
normal work in the daytime, then came back in the
evening and worked all night. What he did was
particularly remarkable, said Humphreys.
White LED lights have benefits beyond improved
efficiency. Unlike some energy-efficient lightbulbs, they
come on instantly. They can survive 11 years of
continuous use. Since the average lightbulb is on for
four hours a day, an LED light could last for 60 years of
normal use.
The three scientists went on to join forces to build a
blue laser, which had at its heart a blue LED the size of
a grain of sand. Because blue light has such a short
wavelength, it can store far more information than other
colours or infrared light. The increased storage capacity
allowed by blue LEDs quickly led to the development of
Blu-ray discs.
Donal Bradley, vice-provost for research at Imperial
College London, said: This took years of unrecognised
effort initially Shuji Nakamuras work at the Nichia
Chemical Company was classified as under the table
or Friday afternoon research since it was considered
so unpromising that it was not backed as an official
research project.
Frances Saunders, president of the UK Institute of
Physics, said: This is physics research that is having a
direct impact on the grandest of scales, helping protect
our environment, as well as turning up in our everyday
electronic gadgets.
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2 PEOPLE, 2 COMMENTS

irishrichy

36

07 October 2014 6:35pm

Very interesting. It's amazing how such a seemingly small breakthrough like this can
have so many applications.

CaptCrash

irishrichy

28

08 October 2014 9:57am

There are lessons in using your bosses equipment... one of them is don't
offer them the solution until you have got a price from someone else.

YnotStrebor

47

07 October 2014 6:51pm

Congratulations! And many thanks Nakamura-san, Akasaki-san and Amano-san: all

the lightbulbs in my home are LEDs, and my TV's backlight is LEDs. Low power
consumption and a very long life.
Moreover, the physics and materials' science behind the development of Blue LEDs
have opened the doors for new understandings and innovations.
Perhaps in five years or so, Sir Richard Friend will be celebrating winning a Nobel
prize for contributions to the development of OLEDs?

4 PEOPLE, 4 COMMENTS

Chepstow

46

07 October 2014 7:01pm

I don't think the blue LED transformated lighting. It simply changeyfied it.

LoonyGoon

Chepstow

07 October 2014 10:42pm

I thought maybe it was a word I didn't know, but Google couldn't find it.

Tim Greening-Jackson

Chepstow

08 October 2014 9:05am

I think Ian Sample is a pseudonym for John Prescott who is pursuing a

career in journalism following his retirement from politics.

Gareth100

Chepstow

09 October 2014 12:57pm

Indeed, the guy who came up with the invention of LEDs isn't too happy his
work has been ignored and he has a point.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/nobel-prize-2014-inventor-ofthe-red-led-hits-out-at-committee-for-overlooking-his-seminal-1960s-work9782948.html

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/oct/07/lightbulb-moment-nobel-physicists-... 10/14/2014

Lightbulb moment for Nobel physicists: prize awarded for inventing blue LEDs | Scie... Page 6 of 6

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