Inventors of blue LED win Nobel Prize for Physics

The 2014 Nobel Prize for Physics has been won by the three scientists who invented the blue LED.

Professors Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura made the breakthrough in the early 1990s. Their discovery has been seen as crucial in the development of LEDs and their use in a wide range of electronics applications. "These uses are what would make Alfred Nobel very happy," said a member of the prize committee.

The quest to create blue LEDs had long been a dream of researchers and scientists in the electronics industry. Red and green LEDs were in standard use, but if LED-based light bulbs, computer and TV screens were to become a reality, blue was required within that mix for the particular white light demanded for these applications. The difficulty researchers faced was in coming up with a suitable semiconductor material.   

Prof Nakamura worked in the US, independently of Profs Akasaki and Amano in Japan, and their discoveries were four years apart. Yet they were united in the particular material they chose: gallium nitride. They were able to grow the substance on a large enough scale that crystals could be formed and packaged into the semiconductor wafers of LEDs.

"What's fascinating is that a lot of big companies really tried to do this and they failed," said the committee chair Prof Per Delsing. "But these guys persisted and they tried and tried again - and eventually they actually succeeded."

Akasaki, Amano and Nakamura will share prize money of eight million kronor (£0.7m).

The academic community has reacted warmly to the news.

"With 20% of the world's electricity used for lighting, it's been calculated that optimal use of LED lighting could reduce this to 4%," said Dr Frances Saunders, president of the Institute of Physics."Akasaki, Amano and Nakamura's research has made this possible. 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."

Prof Sir Colin Humphreys of Cambridge University, said: "It pleases me greatly, because this is good science but it's also useful science. It's making a huge difference to energy savings. And I think some of the Nobel Prizes we have had recently - it will be years, if ever, before that science is usefully applied."