Why It Was Almost Impossible to Make the Blue LED
Why It Was Almost Impossible to Make the Blue LED
The blue LED was supposed to be impossible—until a young engineer proposed a moonshot idea.
Shuji Nakamura was a researcher at Nichia who was determined to create the first blue LED, which had eluded scientists for decades. Through innovative crystal growth techniques and materials discoveries, he succeeded in developing bright blue and white LEDs in the early 1990s. This breakthrough enabled LEDs to be used for full-spectrum lighting. Nichia's fortunes grew enormously as a result, though Nakamura was not properly compensated for his invention. Today, LEDs powered by Nakamura's blue LED technology are ubiquitous and have brought enormous energy savings worldwide.
Something interesting I found was that Nakamura persisted in his research for blue LEDs against the wishes of his company management, who saw it as a waste of resources. His stubbornness and belief in his work paid off by solving a problem that had stumped the electronics industry for 30 years.
The blue led was released in 1993. I remember reading an article in Wired magazine (back when magazines were published on paper) about the invention. Gladly, the article is still available online: https://www.wired.com/1995/03/blue-laser/
I talked with some friends about the “true boo-roo” led, and the phrase stuck with us (that’s why I still remember the article). At the time (almost 30 years ago) we had no idea how important the invention was, even when we realized that it allowed for rgb led light.
But we had no idea leds would be miniaturized to be used in screens and be as ubiquitous as they are today. Living through all this technology evolution has been quite the ride.
Excellent counter example to anyone claiming that we need patent and copyright to innovate.
This man made nothing on his invention and was not motivated by money but fame.
There are endless of examples of how those who do things for money hold back the creativity that leads to innovation. This is one of them. It almost didn't happen because his pursuit was not seen as profitable.
My favorite thing about widely-available blue LEDs was the effect on TV scifi.
Watch the Star Trek shows made in the 1980s and 1990s and the tricorders, alien gadgets, and other props were always twinkling with red, yellow, and green LEDs to look futuristic. A generation later and every single hand prop on 2000s Doctor Who, Torchwood, etc. glowed and twinkled blue because the LEDs had just become cheap enough for prop makers, but weren't yet widespread in day-to-day life so the viewers were seeing something strange and unusual.
Now every color of LED imaginable is just common and whatever, but for a good stretch of time glowy blue became the standard "scifi" color just because that particular tech happened to turn up at that particular time.
This was an yet another glorious episode from veritasium.
I hope we get well past UVC LEDs. (i.e., shorter wavelengths) UV LEDs are already available. Unfortunately, this progress will stop before X-ray light. With +1 KeV energy, you pretty much must blast off the electrons from the atoms to emit X-rays, which an x-ray tube already does. Or by peeling off a piece of scotch tape.
A few details as further info, focusing mostly on the technical aspects:
It's considerably easier to decrease the band gap than to increase it. Decreasing it only requires that you insert some material to provide an intermediate band, while increasing it would likely need alloying it to force some structural change.
The material being in the right band gap is not enough. You need to make sure that it can be p-doped and n-doped, that its crystalline structure is stable even with some temperature variation. Ah, it should be also relatively straightforward to produce industrially.
Then you get the little gem that Nakamura found.
Haven't watch the video yet, but I remember how impressed my step dad was with the blue LED when we got our PlayStation 2. I was like, yeah great whatever let's play games, at the time.
I love Veritasium's deep dives into the scientists behind various inventions. We really ought to celebrate more people like Nakamura.
Here is an Odysee Link for those that don't want to give youtube support.
Capitalism is just sad
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/AF8d72mA41M
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Samsung (etc) caught with their pants down
It makes you wonder how much longer it would take to commercialize blue LEDs without his contributions.
I freaking hate blue LEDs.
I actively avoid buying anything with a blue LED because they are so obnoxious. So bright. Why do I want to read by the light of my HDD? Does this video explain why they have to be like that?
Maybe if you have a separate wing of the mansion to do computing stuff it is not annoying. But if like a lot of people you have electronics in your living space, these lights are extremely disruptive.
It seems that can't really be dimmed.. I had to give up on a couple of blue backlit alarm clocks because there is no way that the time can be visible without illuminating the whole area around them.
For whatever reason, red is the best one. I would prefer another color aesthetically. For whatever reason, red is the only color that does what it has to do and nothing more.
Awesome video. I had no idea about this story.
This video is recommended by Tournesol:
[33🌻] Veritasium: Why It Was Almost Impossible to Make the Blue LED#Tournesol is an open-source web tool by a non profit organization, evaluating the overall quality of the information in videos from community made comparisons, to fight against misinformation and dangerous content.
Seen it, its well made and the end is almost like a good cliffhanger for the next Vid
Testing
im guessing toshiba tried hard
