Two Japanese and one American scientist were Tuesday awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing blue light-emitting diodes, which the award committee said would illuminate the 21st century in a more environmentally sustainable manner.
Isamu Akasaki of Meijo University and Hiroshi Amano of Nagoya University in Japan, and, Shuji Nakamura of the University of California, Santa Barbara, are to share the prize worth 8 million kronor (1.1 million dollars).
“Red and green LEDs have been around for many years, but the blue was really missing,” Nobel Committee member Per Delsing said during the announcement. LED is an acronym for light-emitting diodes, which are electro-conductors.
“If you combine these colours you get white light. This is something that Isaac Newton showed already in 1671. Thanks to the blue LED, we can now get white light sources that have very high energy efficiency and a very long lifetime.”
Nakamura, a Japan-born US citizen, said winning the Nobel “is unbelievable.”
He was speaking by phone to reporters at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, after being woken up at 3 am (1000 GMT) in California.
At the time, Amano was on a plane from Japan to France, secretary Staffan Normark of the academy said.
Akasaki told a press conference at Meijo University in Nagoya, central Japan, that “I am half-surprised” at the news.
“I have a slight cold,” he continued. “When I received a call, I was putting documents in order … When I was told a phonecall is coming from Stockholm, I just thought, ‘maybe’.”
Akasaki and Amano worked together at Nagoya University, while Nakamura began his research at the firm Nichia Chemicals in Tokushima.
White light LEDs are widely used in smartphone devices as well as TVs and laptops. LEDs are a recent development in the history of lighting, only having been developed in the 21st century after light bulbs dominated much of the 19th century. They use far less electrical energy than traditional light bulbs.
“You get almost as much light out of this device as you put in – in terms of electricity – while in an ordinary light bulb, 90 per cent of the energy goes out as heat,” Claes Fransson, astrophysics professor and member of the Physics Committee, told dpa.
Another use is to sterilize water since the blue diodes produce UV (ultraviolet) light, which “can be used for sterilizing polluted water,” he added.
Almost one-fourth of electrical consumption in industrialized countries is devoted to illumination, the prize committee said. With the development of diodes, more light can be emitted for less energy without the need for mercury.
Professor Olle Inganas of the prize committee noted that the invention has great potential for the developing world where an estimated 1.5 billion people lack access to electricity. Since LEDs are so energy efficient, they can be powered by solar energy.
The “many uses” of the invention “would have made Alfred Nobel very happy,” he said, referring to the Swedish inventor of dynamite who endowed the physics prize and in his will wanted to reward inventions of the greatest benefit for mankind.
The prize committee lauded the scientists specifically for developing gallium nitride crystal in the geometrical formations necessary to build diodes.
“The structure of these lamps is very similar to what you have at the base of your semi-conductor electronics that’s driving the information technology,” it said.
GNA
