Tech Story #5: The blue LED that took 30 years
The blue LED took 30 years (Akasaki, Amano, Nakamura — Nobel Prize 2014) and made white LEDs possible.
Red and green LEDs were easy. Blue took 30 years! 💙
1962: the first red LED. But without blue, there was no white LED light.
The material for blue — gallium nitride (GaN) — was too hard to grow as a good crystal. Most labs gave up.
Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano kept going. 1989: the first blue glow (still dim).
Then Shuji Nakamura, at a small Japanese company (Nichia), made it bright — 1993! ✨
All three won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2014. 🏅
Blue light + a yellow coating (phosphor) = white light → every white LED bulb, phone flash and screen backlight today. 💡
Read the voiceover (transcript)
- Red and green LEDs were easy. Blue took thirty years!
- Nineteen sixty-two: red LEDs. Blue? Nobody could make it.
- Its crystal, gallium nitride, was too hard to grow!
- Akasaki and Amano kept going. Nineteen eighty-nine: a blue glow!
- Then Nakamura, at a small company, made it bright!
- Blue plus yellow makes white: every LED bulb!
- Next story: why is it called Arduino? Follow for more!
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