The Blue LED Nobel Prize: Historical context, current scientific understanding, human benefit

The paths that connect scientific understanding with tools and technology are rarely linear. Sometimes scientific understanding leads and enables, sometimes tools and technologies lead and enable. But by feeding into each other, they create virtuous spirals of forward and backward innovation [1]. In perhaps no area of human knowledge has this been more evident than in semiconductors [2]: the interactive progress in semiconductor science and technology has transformed and continues to transform both our scientific understanding of the universe and the technologies with which we live our daily lives. A testament to this are the seven Physics Nobel Prizes listed in Figure 1 that have been awarded in the broad area of semiconductors. Some of the Prizes were for technology breakthroughs – as with research surrounding Si planar processing and the integrated circuit. Some of the Prizes were for science breakthroughs – as with research surrounding the integer and fractional quantum Hall effects. And some were for nearly simultaneous science and technology breakthroughs – as with the transistor. The most recent 2014 Physics Nobel Prize, for the blue lightemitting diode (LED), is clearly for a technology breakthrough. Indeed, it is an extreme example in which the then-prevailing scientific understanding appeared to discourage continued effort. All the more amazing, then, was the perservence of Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura (“AAN” for short), who in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s braved seeming impossibilities and skeptics with an undaunted spirit. In this Opinion piece, we give an informal tour through: (1) the historical conext of semiconductor science and technology breakthroughs that preceded the most recent blue LED breakthrough; (2) our current scientific understanding of the blue LED breakthrough; and (3) the massive human benefit the blue LED breakthrough is unleashing.