3 Scientists Win Nobel prize for physics 2014 goes to inventors of energy-efficient LED light

Two Japanese scientists Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and a Japanese-born American citizen Shuji Nakamura won the Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for inventing blue light-emitting diodes, a breakthrough that has spurred the development of LED technology to light up homes, computer screens and smart phones worldwide.

The trio revolutionized lighting technology two decades ago when they came up with a long-elusive component of the white LED lights that in countless applications today have replaced less efficient incandescent and fluorescent lights.

Red and green light-emitting diodes have been around since the mid-20th century and have been used in applications such as watches and calculators. But scientists had struggled for decades to produce the shorter-wavelength blue LED needed in combination with the others to produce white light when the three laureates made their breakthroughs in the early 1990s.

Their work enabled LED lights — more efficient and long-lasting than previous light sources — to be used in a range of applications, including street lights, televisions and computers.

Akasaki, an 85-year-old professor at Meijo University and Nagoya University, said he had often been told that his research wouldn't bear fruit."But I never felt that way," he said. "I was just doing what I wanted to do."

Akasaki and Amano, 54, made their inventions while working at Nagoya University while Nakamura was working separately at Japanese company Nichia Chemicals. They built their own equipment and carried out thousands of experiments — many of which failed — before they made their breakthroughs.

A fundamental invention

LEDs contribute to saving the Earth's resources because about one-fourth of world electricity consumption is used for lighting purposes. They tend to last 10 times longer than fluorescent lamps and 100 times longer than incandescent light bulbs.

"The blue LED is a fundamental invention that is rapidly changing the way we bring light to every corner of the home, the street and the workplace — a practical invention that comes from a fundamental understanding of physics in the solid state,"

"They succeeded where everyone else had failed," the Nobel committee said. "Incandescent light bulbs lit the 20th century; the 21st century will be lit by LED lamps."


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Professors Akasaki, Amano and Nakamura made the first blue LEDs in the early 1990s