How Blue LEDs Changed the World

This year's Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to three Japanese scientists for the invention of blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs), a technology that has touched society in huge number of ways and enabled technologies that Americans take as something that will never go away every day.
   
Without blue LEDs, the world wouldn't have backlit smartphones, TV and computer LCD screens, Blu-ray players, many forms of lighting, and huge numbers of other (related to computers and science) marvels. Blue LEDs, in combination with red and green LEDs make it possible to produce white light. This kind of lighting is much more energy efficient and has a longer life span than ordinary glowing lights.Car lighting is another application where LEDs are making progress. In the electronics industry, LEDs provide backlighting for the liquid crystal displays (LCDs) in many smartphones, laptops, and televisions. The LEDs are more energy efficient than the fluorescent lights that are sometimes used for backlighting and allow for very thin displays.Blu-ray players to DVD players, use blue LED lasers to read data off a digital optical disc and it became possible to store five to 10 times as much data.

LEDs are now being explored for their potential to transmit data from the Internet across open space, similar to WiFi. Such a system could transmit a lot more data than WiFi alone.This high radio frequency/ability is possible because LEDs can turn on and offmillions of times per second. Now, purification plants use mercury lamps to kill any bacteria in drinking water, but these lamps consume a lot of electricity. By contrast, LED light can purify water directly at the faucet and turn on or off as needed -- resulting in huge cost savings.

The invention of blue LEDs, the 2014 physics prize was awarded to Japanese scientists Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura  (Oct. 7).