Nobel Prize for Physics in 2014 in light blue – Computer Point

Rome – After quantum computing and the Higgs boson, in 2014, it’s up to blue LED: light emitting diode guaranteed at Isamu Akasaki Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura highest award in the field of scientific research. In three of them the Nobel Prize for Physics this year, in virtue of the “contribution to create white light in a completely new way for the benefit of all.”

The invention of the three Japanese scientists had escaped the industry of ‘ electronics for decades, since the 50s: only at the beginning of the 90s the three were able, thanks to their perseverance, to produce the first LED capable of emitting light in the frequencies of blue. Until then red and green were widely within the reach of any company and the laboratory, but the last piece eluded everyone: it was impossible to use without the classic combination of RGB (Red-Green-Blue) to play the white light and use it for different purposes. Today with this combination we are very thin, low-power LCD display that allow you to have incredibly powerful smartphone in their pockets, or TV giant with diagonals from 1 meter and a half that cheer the audience into living rooms around the world.

value greater than the discovery of Akasaki, Amano and Nakamura, however, is tied to the artificial lighting, the one to illuminate the darkness of the night: a light bulb based on LED instead of incandescent filaments or fluorescent tubes consume just 1 watt to produce 300 lumens, a value of at least an order of magnitude higher than that of previous technologies and is compatible with power sources alternative to the classic electrical household present in Western countries. With a small solar panel can accumulate enough energy during the day to keep lit LED bulbs at night, and this is tantamount to provide illumination to the most remote locations in the poorest countries of the globe. A matter that involves at least 1.5 billion people on Earth.

The three Japanese scientists honored today are able to obtain a diode capable of emitting light from a semiconductor-based gallium nitride in the lower part of the spectrum of the visible: until then the material in question was considered promising but difficult to produce, but the three were able to independently study a method for its growth. Akasaki and Amano worked together, Nakamura alone: ​​thanks to their work with substrates made of aluminum or indium, in the course of the 90s of the last century the three diodes produced more efficient and improved by simplifying the process to derive the structure of the semiconductor and synthesize even at low temperature. Merged into one team Japanese scientists worked out a blue laser: the shorter wavelength of the beam of concentrated light has allowed the development of data storage technology that would later lead to the creation of Blu-ray.

This year, the Nobel Foundation has therefore decided to reward discoveries and inventions that have had great impact in our daily lives: the blue LEDs are among them, without them there would not be the now ubiquitous smartphones and laptops, and electronics would be still relegated to bulky cathode ray tubes and thirsty. Not to mention the enormous impact that the conversion to LED home lighting and urban could have on consumption and pollution on a global scale.

Luca Annunziata