Nobel Prize for Physics 2014 To Blue LED
Hemanta Phurailatpam *
R, G, and B LEDs :: Pix - Wikipedia/PiccoloNamek
With the immense shift in the way, people recognize achievement. It is great pleasure to hear that this year's (2014) Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded for a ground-breaking invention of efficient blue-LED (Light Emitting Diode), which is an important piece needed for the production of white LED.
The event of expansion of the white LED technology comes as a huge impact in everyday lighting system, revolutionize screen display and also brings about extensive economic benefits to the whole world (thanks to those scientists who made this breakthrough).
Isamu Akasaki (Meijo University, Nagoya, and Nagoya University, Japan), Hiroshi Amano (Nagoya University, Japan) and Shuji Nakamura (University of California, Santa Barbara) have been dignified with this year's prestigious prize ( Nobel Prize in Physics).
The contribution of Japanese in the pursuit of new dimensions in Physics deserves to be highly appreciated. The event of practical application of LEDs came about 1960s with the improvement in the field of semiconductor. It turned out that production red and green LEDs are comparatively easier to the third party, blue LEDs.
It was not until 1990s, a method to produce light of shorter wavelength (blue light) was developed using gallium-nitride semiconductor and with new doping technology. With the third party in place, development of white LEDs was realized, which is a combination of red, green and blue.
White LED becomes extensively used with wide range applications, which ranges from simple LED sensor to LED TV screen. It also revolutionized lighting technology; with its efficient and economic superiority, overthrows both of its counterparts i.e. incandescent and fluorescent light. "Incandescent light bulbs lit the 20th century; the 21st century will be lit by LED lamps" the Nobel committee quoted.
Unlike previous years, this year's prize goes to a subject which is familiar to everyone and can relate to their everyday life. Phillip Schewe, a physicist at University of Maryland, commented that the prize shows that physics research can provide a practical benefit, rather than just probing the mysteries of the universe.
* Hemanta Phurailatpam wrote this article for e-pao.net
The Writer is a B.Sc. Honours Student at Hindu College, Delhi University and can be contacted at hemantaphurailatpam(at)gmail(dot)com
This article was posted on October 09, 2014.
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