Why Blue LED Earned a Nobel Prize if Reds and Greens Already Existed for Decades?
Red and green LEDs already existed for a few decades when the efficient blue LED was invented in 1989.
For the discovery of a bright blue LED engineer Shuji Nakamura and physicists Hiroshi Amano and Isamu Akasaki were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2014.
Strong blue LEDs led to the development of some new technologies based only on blue LEDs. More importantly, blue LED completed the RGB spectrum, allowing for the production of visible full-color LED screens and white LEDs. The Nobel prize was presented with a statement:
Incandescent light bulbs lit the 20th century; the 21st century will be lit by LED lamps.
But what was so special about the blue LED that its discovery deserved a Nobel prize?
High-brightness blue LED was a long-awaited milestone, important for advancing LED technology. Even though it was not until the early 1970s that color television in North America outsold black-and-white TVs, a color TV using cathode-ray tubes was introduced in the US in 1953.
