LED inventors win Nobel Physics prize

Three scientists who invented the technology behind today’s high-end LED headlights have won this year’s Nobel Prize for Physics.

The three men invented blue-light emitting diodes, which had eluded scientists for years. The blue-light emitting diodes combine with the long-existing red- and green-light emitting diodes to deliver clean, white light that demands very little energy to create.

Hiroshi Amano and Isamu Akasaki of Japan and the Japanese-born but naturalized American, Shuji Nakamura, will share 8 million Swedish kronor (around $1.2 million) when the prize is ceremonially handed over on December 10, along with a gold medal and a diploma.

While red LEDs made their debut on Maserati’s famed boomerang brake lights in the 3200 GT coupe of 1998, white LEDs had to wait for Audi’s A8 W12 in 2006. They have since become almost compulsory in the daytime running lights on everything from micro-cars to supercars, and LED DRLs have become a trademark for brands like Audi.

The German car-maker has also offered the LED low- and high-beam headlights since 2010, with premium brands taking the technology even further with Matrix LED headlights that can run on high-beam while blanking out the area covering approaching vehicles, as well as turning in corners and spotlighting lurking or crossing animals and pedestrians detected by infra-red cameras.

While the technology is being supplemented with far-reaching Laser Light technology in the BMW i8 and Audi R8 LMX, it is unlikely to be supplanted by it. Laser Lights provide narrow, concentrated beams while LED and Matrix LED have a broader and more useful spread.

Red-light emitting diodes were invented in the early 1960s and have been used for years in everything from calculators to watches, but it took the invention of the short-wavelength, blue-light emitting diode 20 years ago to spell out the end of the fluorescent and incandescent light era in household and industrial applications.

With advances in semiconductor materials and fabrication techniques, the invention of blue-light emitting diodes in the mid-1990s spurred the growth of smartphones, was involved in a revolution in computer screens and is on the cusp of another in household and industrial lighting.

The white light replicated in everything from laptops to headlights is created by blending red, green and blue LEDs, which are highly efficient at converting electrical energy into visible light.

White LEDs are now used widely in street lights, traffic lights, flashlights and, as costs come down, home and office lights. They're also a major force in electronics, providing the light in screens on phones, tablets and TVs.

The Nobel committee said LEDs contribute to saving the Earth's resources because about a quarter of world electricity consumption is used for lighting purposes. They tend to last 10 times longer than fluorescent lamps and 100 times longer than the latest versions of Thomas Edison's incandescent light bulb, which works by heating up a filament until it glows but wastes lots of energy as heat.

Fluorescent bulbs are more than four times more efficient, but LEDs are nearly 20 times as efficient as incandescent bulbs. And developing countries can sterilize water with ultraviolet LEDs.

Announcing the award at a press conference last week, physics professor at the Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, Per Delsing, said that because a quarter of energy consumption goes to illumination, any increase in efficiency and consequent energy saving  "is really going to have a big impact on modern civilization".

“They succeeded where everyone else had failed,” the Nobel Committee said. “Incandescent bulbs lit up the 20th century; the 21st century will be lit by LED lamps.”

In a statement released by the University of California, where he is a 60-year-old professor, Nakamura said: “It is very satisfying to see that my dream of LED lighting has become a reality.

“I hope that energy-efficient LED light bulbs will help reduce energy use and lower the cost of lighting worldwide.”

Japan celebrated the announcement with a nationally televised press conference for 85-year old Professor Akasaki, from the Meijo and Nagoya universities, where he explained he was repeatedly told his work was a dead end that wouldn’t produce useful results.

“But I never felt that way. I was just doing what I wanted to do,” he explained.

Professors Akasaki and Amano (the youngest of the three, at 54), made their breakthroughs at Nagoya University. At the time of his discovery, Nakamura was working for Nichia Chemicals.

Nichia initially paid Nakamura $US200 for his invention, but he later won $8 million after a 2005 lawsuit in which he argued he deserved a bigger share of the royalties from his invention.