Dr. Shuji Nakamura - Engineering & Science Hall of Fame

1954

Electronic engineer and inventor of the blue LED

Shuji Nakamura received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from University of Tokushima, Japan and worked at Nichia Chemical Industries from 1979—2000 after which point he became a professor at UCSB. During his time at Nichia, he independently researched and ultimately demonstrated group-III nitride materials as possible blue light emitters. Instrumental to his success was the development of a novel two-flow MOCVD, in 1990. This tool permitted him to obtain and explain p-type GaN while demonstrating the first high quality InGaN layers, in 1992. This material was integrated into novel device structures, providing the bright violet, blue, or green LEDs and lasers known today. High efficiency white light sources using these blue LEDs became available in 1996 and have since become the most efficient white light source known to man, changing the world forever. This achievement led him to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2014. In addition to winning the Nobel Prize in 2014 for his ground-breaking discovery, Professor Nakamura is the recipient of many accolades.

To cite some examples, his awards include the Materials Research Society Medal Award in 1997, the British Rank Prize and the IEEE Jack A. Morton Award in 1998, the OSA Nick Holonyak Award and the LEOS Distinguished Lecturer Award in 2001, the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Engineering and the IEEE/LEOS Quantum Electronics Award in 2002, the Society for Information Display (SID) Karl Ferdinard Braun Prize in 2004, the Millennium Technology Prize from Finland in 2006, the Prince of Asturias Award in 2008, the Harvey Prize by Technion in 2009,the Global Energy Prize from Russia and the Charles Stark Energy Prize in 2015, the Zayed Future Energy Prize Lifetime Achievement Award from the United Arab Emirates in 2018, the NAS Award for the Industrial Applications of Science in 2020, and the Queen Elizabeth Engineering Prize in 2021. Professor Nakamura is a Fellow of the US National Academy of Engineering, a Lifetime Fellow of the US National Academy of Inventors, an Inductee of the US National Inventors Hall of Fame, and a Member of the Royal Academy of Engineering. Since 2000, Shuji Nakamura has been a professor of Materials and Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

In 2013, he co-founded SLD Laser to pioneer blue lasers and laser lighting products; the company was acquired by Kyocera Corporation in early 2021. In 2023, Professor Nakamura co-founded Blue Laser Fusion with a novel invention of optical enhancement cavity to increase the laser peak power more than 100,000 times. Blue Laser Fusion will harness an understanding of semiconductor lasers in its pursuit of fusion energy.

References:
Dr. Shuji Nakamura Wikipedia.