The bright blue LED is invented

Red and green light-emitting diodes had existed since the 1960s, but a bright blue one, needed to make white light and full-colour displays, resisted researchers for thirty years. In 1989 to 1992, Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano at Nagoya University grew crystals of gallium nitride, and in 1993 Shuji Nakamura at the small company Nichia demonstrated a high-brightness blue LED. White LEDs, which are made by adding a phosphor coating to blue ones, use a fraction of the energy of incandescent bulbs and last 100,000 hours. The three physicists shared the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics. LED lighting is a main way of saving electricity.

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