Nobel Prize awarded to physicists who developed revolutionary LED lighting system

Three physicists were awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics by developing low-cost, solar-powered LED lights that could greatly reduce electricity usage.

Just as Thomas Edison lit up the 1900s with the incandescent lightbulb, the coming century will be lit with revolutionary LED lights developed by one American and two Japanese physicists.

Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano of Japan, and Shuji Nakamura of the University of California, were awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize in physics for or “the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes, which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources.”

Light-emitting diodes, or LED for short, had been studied by the three physicists since the 1990s. They created blue light beams that could produce white light, illuminating rooms and replacing the inefficient incandescent lightbulb.

LED bulbs are vastly more energy-efficient, producing 20 times the light of an incandescent bulb and four times that of a fluorescent lightbulb. They last 10 times longer than the fluorescent bulb and 100 times longer than the traditional incandescent bulb.

The diodes consist of semiconducting materials layered together. Photons of light are produced when an electrical charge is applied. Roughly the size of a grain of salt, the diodes’ light color depends on the form of semiconductor used in the device.

The tricky part was to produce blue light, which had frustrated researchers in the past. But the three scientists utilized gallium nitrite, crystals that could help produce the blue and white lights. The crystals were difficult to grow and even harder to incorporate into the diodes.

Many devices, such as smartphones and televisions, already use LED lights. But the future is even brighter for LED: it can provide low-cost, solar-powered energy around the world, especially for the 1.5 billion people who currently lack access to electricity. Africa has already begun adopting diode lamps to replace traditional kerosene lamps that are harmful to the environment. As one-quarter of the world’s electricity is used to produce light, the LED are a significant benefit to the power grid.

The scientists will share a grand prize of $1.1 million split among them three ways.