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Japan Science Technology

2014 Nobel Prize In Physics Awarded To the Inventors of the Blue LED 243

grouchomarxist writes with word that "The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura, the inventors of the blue LED." From the organization's press release: When Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura produced bright blue light beams from their semi-conductors in the early 1990s, they triggered a fundamental transformation of lighting technology. Red and green diodes had been around for a long time but without blue light, white lamps could not be created. Despite considerable efforts, both in the scientific community and in industry, the blue LED had remained a challenge for three decades. They succeeded where everyone else had failed. Akasaki worked together with Amano at the University of Nagoya, while Nakamura was employed at Nichia Chemicals, a small company in Tokushima. Their inventions were revolutionary. Incandescent light bulbs lit the 20th century; the 21st century will be lit by LED lamps. White LED lamps emit a bright white light, are long-lasting and energy-efficient. They are constantly improved, getting more efficient with higher luminous flux (measured in lumen) per unit electrical input power (measured in watt). The most recent record is just over 300 lm/W, which can be compared to 16 for regular light bulbs and close to 70 for fluorescent lamps. As about one fourth of world electricity consumption is used for lighting purposes, the LEDs contribute to saving the Earth's resources. Materials consumption is also diminished as LEDs last up to 100,000 hours, compared to 1,000 for incandescent bulbs and 10,000 hours for fluorescent lights. The LED lamp holds great promise for increasing the quality of life for over 1.5 billion people around the world who lack access to electricity grids: due to low power requirements it can be powered by cheap local solar power.
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2014 Nobel Prize In Physics Awarded To the Inventors of the Blue LED

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    But I'm ok with that.

    • by halivar ( 535827 )

      What is engineering but applied math and physics?

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Rostin ( 691447 )
        Applied economics. Engineers usually need to find robust solutions that are constrained by or that make pareto-optimal use of scarce resources.
    • Technically [wikipedia.org], the prize goes to "the person who shall have made the most important 'discovery' or 'invention' within the field of physics". Insofar as 'inventions' are considered engineering, they fall within the scope of the physics prize. The 1912 prize [nobelprize.org], for example, went to the inventor of an automatic regulator for lighthouses.

  • The bulbs need to come down in price a bit yet

    • But they are much closer. You can get them under $10.00 now. Because of their long life, and low energy usage. That means you are saving overall.

      If we could get our homes switched to DC, then we could have these without the extra electronics in them.

      • You can get them under $10.00 now.

        You can get them for under $3 now. That is the price on eBay, in lots of ten, shipped direct from China, with free shipping. The bulbs are identical to those at Home Depot, except for the logo. I have bought over a hundred. I converted my house, my parents, two siblings, and an office suite. Number of failures so far: 0.

        • by timothy ( 36799 ) Works for Slashdot

          Do you have a particular seller to recommend? I've been slowly replacing the bulbs in my house with LED ones instead, buying on the low end of the price range in brick & mortar stores. For some reason, I still trust Amazon far more than I do eBay when it comes to dealing with errors or disappointing products, but a lot of cool things are on eBay and not Amazon.

          So: do you have favoritess? Model numbers to search for?

          • Do you have a particular seller to recommend?

            I have bought from several sellers, and have no problems with any of them. Just look at their feedback. If they have over a thousand sales, with 99% positive feedback, then it is very unlikely that you will have a problem. Some of the sellers are based in Hong Kong, while others based in mainland China. The bulbs are the same, but the shipping will be a little faster from HK.

            So: do you have favoritess? Model numbers to search for?

            First, click on "Auction" (the "Buy it Now" prices are are a ripoff), then search for "led e27 warm 10pcs". Include the "warm" on

          • by Khyber ( 864651 )

            I suggest you go to Alibaba.com

            Sort by price, don't forget to add in a minimum order quantity (labeled MOQ)

            Failing that (usually due to MOQ) try Aliexpress, which is more geared towards the end-user rather than retailers.

      • Whoa whoa, hold on there! Does that make sense? At 15 cents per kWh, 12 hours per day lighting, these bulbs save $2.25/mo over incandescent lighting. That's over $25/year, minus the $10 to buy them. They tend to burn out within the year, though; CFLs have the same issue, and it never actually went away: tons of hours of run time, but not many cycles.

        I have occupancy sensors. Some of my lights run 6 hours per day; the rest run rarely. My overall lighting savings is on the order of $2-$3/mo for my e

        • by Khyber ( 864651 )

          300 lumens per watt for LED, versus a measly (typical) 50-ish for CFL and 100-ish for T5 flourescent.

          And typical white LEDs right now are ~130 lumens per watt.

          "LED savings over CFL bulbs is dubious"

          Not with the math I just popped above.

          • by Rei ( 128717 )

            Sorry, but you do not get anywhere even remotely close to 300 lumens per watt in real-world LED lightbulbs, and I challenge you to demonstrate anywhere that you can.

            • by Khyber ( 864651 )

              Sure. Cree is already producing them. 5150K 300+l/w 85C junction temp 350mA drive.

              Next?

          • Uh. 9W 800 lumen LED [amazon.com] vs 14W 800 lumen CFL [amazon.com]. That's 27 cents per month if the bulb is on 12 hours per day; with my 6 hour per day cycle on my longest-running bulbs, it's not even 1kWh difference.

            The entire savings is overshadowed by how long a CFL ballast lasts versus an LED ballast.

            • by Khyber ( 864651 )

              >implying LEDs use a ballast, which by definition is an HVT running pure AC, versus LEDs which typically (unless they use my tech) run with an AC-DC rectifier.

              Get on my level. [youtube.com]

      • by fisted ( 2295862 )

        If we could get our homes switched to DC, then we could have these without the extra electronics in them.

        Nah. You'd still need a constant-current source, LEDs aren't Ohmic.

      • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        If we could get our homes switched to DC, then we could have these without the extra electronics in them.

        Unlikely to happen as it would cost more.

        Low voltage DC throughout the home would mean high-currents are required - take say, a 12W LED bulb. If you wanted to run it direct, that would mean around 3V at 4A. Wire 4 up in parallel and that's 16A, which means your cabling in the house is just as thick as it is now. Get 10 bulbs and that's 40A, which requires jumper-cable style thickness of wires.

        Wire thick

      • by Alioth ( 221270 )

        You still need the extra electronics for LEDs run off DC. They require a regulator circuit (basically a small switch mode power supply). You can't just put in a series resistor with a high powered LED otherwise it would be no more efficient than an incandescent bulb.

  • by jones_supa ( 887896 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2014 @08:20AM (#48082255)
    Shuji Nakamura already won the Millennium Technology Prize in 2006 [taf.fi] under the same topic. I bet there have been more recent developments in science that would have deserved more a Nobel Prize in Physics. Right?
  • by hansraj ( 458504 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2014 @08:22AM (#48082259)

    As about one fourth of world electricity consumption is used for lighting purposes, the LEDs contribute to saving the Earth's resources.

    Efficiency does not mean lower consumption. Efficiency remains a useful goal but not "to save the planet's resources". The latter can happen only if overall consumption is reduced. What will happen is that as electricity used for lighting purposes is consumed less, it will get cheaper to direct it elsewhere.

    • With that mindset, we might as well be driving gas guzzlers from the 70s and never bother with trying to conserve anything.
  • If you know how photons are generated at the atomic level, it is actually very difficult to get an electrical circuit to turn into a full spectrum of all visible colors that make up white light.
  • by Chris Mattern ( 191822 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2014 @08:35AM (#48082369)

    It's the first Nobel for a Blue Light Special!

    • by colfer ( 619105 )

      Mod up!

      Solar cells are also diodes, they just work in reverse from LED's. Applying light creates a current, as opposed to a current creating light. All based on getting an electron state to jump from a semiconductor to another semiconductor that differs by one valence. The semiconductors in solar cells are two big discs, one on top of the other. (Experts please correct any of the preceding.)

      Just like K-mart and Sears.

  • Been waiting for this one for a while. Fully deserved.

  • by Riktov ( 632 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2014 @09:57AM (#48083171) Journal

    Probably not. [wikipedia.org]

    • The key part of the phrase which is so often overlooked in "laws/effects/rules" such as this is "tends to." I think that LEDs replacing CFLs is one of those cases that would clearly be an exception to this rule. I'm not going to light up my house like a Christmas tree because LEDs have some efficiency gains over CFLs.

      The argument that an increase in lighting efficiency would increase the demand for lighting just doesn't make sense in a society where no one is deprived of lighting because it's outside of the

  • Has the inanimate carbon rod ever won anything?
  • by LanceUppercut ( 766964 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2014 @05:39PM (#48087577)

    These people are not inventors of the blue LED. This specific kind of blue LED was invented in Soviet Union in the 1960's by the team of Zhores I. Alferov (the winner of 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics). Nobody disputes the priority on the invention itself.

    After that the issue was to develop the manufacturing process that would make the mass-production of such blue LEDs feasible. The Japanese team did exactly that: they came up with the technology that allows one to mass-manufacture the Alferov's device cheaply.

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