In the 1960s, the first LED light-emitting diodes were developed. The red LED was first created by Nick Holonyak in 1962. Years later, in 1967, Georde Craford created the first green LED. But what few people know is that it is only when 1993 when, after much insistence, Shuji Nakamura created the first blue LED diode.
Nowadays, you can go to any electronics store (or online) and buy blue LEDs with no problem. Their creation was not easy, as it took a long time to find a suitable material capable of emitting blue light.
The difficulty is that the waveform of blue light is shorter than that of red or green. A material located in the “forbidden band” was required to be able to generate this blue light. The problem is that for decades the existence of an optimal material was unknown, until Shuji Nakamura discovered it.
Creating a blue LED, an odyssey that lasted decades
Initially, LED light-emitting diodes were only used in signaling devices. For as long as green and red have existed, they were commonly used to indicate whether an electronic device was on or off. A set of these could be used to display complex state, such as in music players, to display frequency oscillation.
You should know that in the 1980s, gallium nitride (GaN) was discovered and it had the property of generating blue light. But I had a big problem and that was that synthesizing and manipulating this material was very complicated. It had flaws that affected effectiveness.
It was not until 1993 that Shuji Nakamura of Nichia Corp succeeded in synthesizing the first blue LED based on indium gallium nitride (InGaN). At the same time, Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano were working on the crystal nucleation of gallium nitride on sapphire substrates to obtain p-type doping.
It should be noted that GaN has already been the subject of studies on several occasions. It was known to have emitting capability in the blue light band, but due to its complex crystallization process, it was abandoned until Shuji arrived.
Shuji Nakamura did not have a doctorate, which made many of his classmates look down on him. Since he was not allowed to use the machines for his research, he tried to replicate them, leading him to be seen by his colleagues as just a technician.
But thanks to his determination and insistence, he managed to develop the first blue LED diode. Thanks to this development and the red and green LEDs, white light could now be created. Not only did this generate a revolution in the lighting industry, but it also marked the beginning of the creation of high-resolution LED and LCD displays.
Thanks to this development, we can indeed have gaming monitors, laptop screens, SmartTVs, smartphones, tablets, screens in cars, etc. Without Nakamura’s insistence, we probably wouldn’t have all of these devices today.
Two decades later, in 2014, Nakamura, Akasaki and Amano received the Nobel Prize in Physics. His work in the development of the blue LED and his contribution to humanity were thus recognized.
