Throw Some Light On the Nobel Prize

The Physics Nobel prize this year is being awarded to three Japanese scientists who contributed to the invention of blue light emitting diodes. While the LEDs were first invented way back in the 1960s, those were unavailable in the color blue which throw natural looking light. The LEDs in red and green were often used as indicators in complex machinery and electronic gadgets.

However till the 1990s there was no material which would allow scientists to produce a blue LED. LEDs are made from semi conductors that use voltage to move electrons and positive carriers named holes through many layers of a crystal sandwich. When these two come together in the active layer of the crystal sandwich, photons are produced which essentially show up as light.

In this science project the right combination of semiconductor materials and dopants needed to produce blue light had to be found. The Nobel Committee recognized three researchers as contributing equally to this breakthrough. They are Isamu Akasaki of Meijo University in Nagoya and Nagoya University; Hiroshi Amano of Nagoya University; and Shuji Nakamura, now of the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Thanks to this trio, today we have an ongoing revolution in lighting. Blue LEDs will not only allow us to illuminate our homes and offices in natural light, they will also reduce the cost of energy required for doing so. Now this is a socially useful science project that really deserves the recognition it got.