Isamu Akasaki, Inventor of First Efficient Blue LED, Dies At 92 (japantimes.co.jp) 22
Physicist Isamu Akasaki, a co-winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in physics for inventing the world's first efficient blue light-emitting diodes, has died, Meijo University said Friday. He was 92. The Japan Times reports: Akasaki, born in Kagoshima Prefecture, graduated from Kyoto University in 1952 before working at Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., now Panasonic Corp. He started working at Nagoya University as a professor in 1981 and was later given an honorary title. In 2014, he shared the Nobel Prize with physicist Hiroshi Amano, professor at the university, and Japan-born American Shuji Nakamura, professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Akasaki, when he was a professor at Nagoya University, worked with Amano to produce gallium nitride crystals, and succeeded in 1989 in creating the world's first blue LED. Akasaki was honored in 1997 by the Japanese government with the Medal with Purple Ribbon, an honor bestowed on those who have made contributions to academic and artistic developments.
Akasaki, when he was a professor at Nagoya University, worked with Amano to produce gallium nitride crystals, and succeeded in 1989 in creating the world's first blue LED. Akasaki was honored in 1997 by the Japanese government with the Medal with Purple Ribbon, an honor bestowed on those who have made contributions to academic and artistic developments.
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Even better, you can use blue LEDs to excite phosphors, and create nearly full spectrum lighting at any color temperature you want.
=Smidge=
Re:Seven years already? (Score:4, Funny)
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And not only that, you can also use it to manufacture appliances and devices that disrupt people's natural sleep!
Or put a blue LED behind the power button on my computer that is so bright it burns Mr. Akasaki's chop into my retina.
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Board manufacturers still think in red led values when choosing the resistors for the LEDs, but they're wrong, dead wrong.
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Blue LEDs are ridiculously over-used. Presumably because they were last to the party manufacturers think they're terribly cool and stick unnecessary ones everywhere, and as you say they disrupt sleep.
Let's start a "Campaign for sensible LED usage" and press for the return of red and green ones (nicely dimmed).
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I still think green should be for power, red for danger/error/problem/hot/etc and blue for cold/can't think of anything else right now.
We talked about this a few months ago, I think there should be a world standard for LED colours and their meaning. The problem was that each industry already has their own standard and a lot of industries have conflicting standards.
Re:Seven years already? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yep, it was (is).
A million years ago when I was in tech school and red LEDs were still kinda new, I remember the Solid State Engineering instructor confidently informing us that we would never see a blue LED.
He went on at length explaining that because of some basic limitation of physics, blue LEDs were "impossible to make" (and always would be). Nope, they would never be able to make a blue LED.
I wonder where he is now.
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Your instructor was wrong when he said it.
No shit; that was kind of the whole point of my post.
Re:Seven years already? (Score:5, Informative)
A "white" LED is actually a blue LED with a phosphor that emits yellow light when absorbing blue light. It is of course also necessary for RGB LEDs.
So, the blue LED is therefore in practically every LED lamp out there, which have completely replaced incandescent and flourescent lamps out there.
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Will keep the ghosts awake (Score:5, Funny)
The first blue LED was actually created in 1972 (Score:3)
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech... [ieee.org]
Nobel Shocker: RCA Had the First Blue LED in 1972
Re: The first blue LED was actually created in 197 (Score:3)
Did you bother to read the few lines of that article? It had a lot of problems.
Re: The first blue LED was actually created in 19 (Score:3)
They lasted only minutes before self distruct, and often needed cooling with liquid nitrogen. The breakthrough was not efficient blue LEDs but ones that lasted a useful amount of time so could be used in commercial applications.
Re:The first blue LED was actually created in 1972 (Score:5, Informative)
Nothing shocking about it. That 1972 Blue LED was technically useless in every way shape and form, while Isamu Akasaki's invention fundamentally changed the way we do lighting.
Complete list of achievements from Maruska:
- A faint blue glow that burnt itself out.
Now a complete list of achievements from Akasaki:
- A high brightness LED with incredibly high efficiency and high life.
- The final missing colour to develop RGB LEDs giving rise to LED displays.
- A critical component in the development of the white LED which depended on blue light for exciting phosphor (not unlike a fluro tube).
- That last point fundamentally changed home lighting around the world.
- That second last point fundamentally changed display technology around the world.
Congratulations to Maruska's achievements too, but calling that a blue LED is like pouring gasoline in a bucket, throwing a match at it and declaring you invented the internal combustion engine.
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Memorial date? (Score:2)
The date of this announcement was interestingly timed. Does anyone remember the "April Fools Blue LED" joke article? Weirdly I can't find any reference to it on Google, but it was either Popular Electronics, Popular Science or maybe even Radio Electronics magazine, had an April Fools joke article where they announced the new "Blue LED"!
At the time LED's were all red, green, yellow, and orange or IR only. This was, oh, probably 1975 or so, when LEDs had been around for a few years by then, and were getti