8 ms·

The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics

241 points by sasvari 12y ago

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
pencilcode 12y ago
btw, Nobel priZe
- boomskats 12y ago
  Did someone call it a priSe? It was only a prise when Obama got the Nobel Peace one.
  - PvsNP_ZA 12y ago
    Nope, original spelling of the topic said "price".
    - blisterpeanuts 12y ago
      Autocorrect is wreaking havoc with the language!
    - mturmon 12y ago
      From the OP, the Nobel Price -- SEK 8 million, to be shared equally between the Laureates. ;-)
DodgyEggplant 12y ago
An amazing choice of something that is used daily, which unlike many Nobel price level physics, everybody can relate to. Generations of physics students will be raised by this particular choice.
- chton 12y ago
  I'm still on the hedge about it. Yes, it's more relate-able and inspiring, but it isn't really a contribution to physics as much as engineering. If they had been given the prize for their underlying work on semiconductors, that would have been a lot more valid. While I'm happy for them, and am in no way qualified to question the Nobel committee, it just doesn't strike me as an "outstanding contribution to the field of physics".
  - Osmium 12y ago
    > it just doesn't strike me as an "outstanding contribution to the field of physics" You have to consider it within the context of the intention of the Nobel prize, which is to reward the "invention of greatest benefit to mankind". So perhaps it's not fundamental physics per se, but it's certainly in the spirit of the prize. [Disclaimer: I work on this stuff, and was lucky enough to see Nakamura talk just recently. So I'm definitely biased!] Edit: Also, coming from a background where I've gone through the whole gamut of physics, chemistry, materials science, engineering and the rest, I have to say that there's a tendency to undervalue the contribution from actually going from something that's theoretically possible to actually practical. In some respects, the fundamental physics is the 'easy' part–nice neat equations describing nice neat systems. Actually trying to make them, when you're up against entropy introducing all manner of crystal defects and impurities and what-not, is a whole different story. And it's so complex, and the tools you use so rudimentary, you can very much feel like a blind man feeling around in the dark just trying to understand what's going on, and what you've actually managed to make. To go from that to a functioning, reproducible device? It definitely deserves recognition.
    - DodgyEggplant 12y ago
      Is it possible for you, with the HN forum limits, to describe some such interesting major issues with LED (for a physics illiterate)?
      - Osmium 12y ago
        Sure. I can give a flavour of some of the issues that people are interested in within the nitrides, but it wouldn't be an exhaustive list... So, to start at the beginning: how do we grow these things? At the heart of every LED is a crystal. For blue LEDs, this crystal is gallium nitride (GaN). How do we grow these crystals at scale? This achievement is behind this Nobel prize, but it's far from a solved problem even today. They found out you could grow GaN by flowing hot gasses containing Ga and N on top of an artificial sapphire film, which would act as a template for the crystal to grow. The problem is that GaN crystals and sapphire crystals are slightly different sizes (the gaps between their constituent atoms is different) so they don't match up exactly, and this resulted in a lot of strain and defects in the GaN crystals–but sapphire was the best we had, and it worked. The trouble is, sapphire isn't great: it's expensive and you can only make small crystals. The big push now is to find a way of growing GaN on top of silicon. This would make it a lot easier to grow larger crystals and would also make it a lot easier to incorporate GaN into silicon-based devices. But growing on silicon comes with its own problems, so it's even harder to grow high quality films. Specifically, cracking as the crystal cools from its growth temperature is a big problem because the thermal conductivity of silicon and GaN is so different. There's also a push to try and grow GaN directly from a liquid, which would be more like how we grow silicon 'from scratch' (rather than growing on top of a template). This shows a lot of promise but it's a long way from commercial viability yet. I'll try and come back and comment on some other issues later on if there's interest :)
dbcooper 12y ago
Shuji Nakamura originally received only $200 from Nichia for the invention. He later received an $8.1M settlement. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/12/business/worldbusiness/12light.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/12/business/worldbusiness/12l...
- readerrrr 12y ago
  I assume that in the USA or even in Europe with a restrictive contract, he would a minor reward at best?
Sharlin 12y ago
Shuji Nakamura was also previously awarded the Finnish Millennium Technology Prize for his work on blue LEDs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Technology_Prize http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Technology_Prize
nnain 12y ago
For those who read only the 'Blue LED' part from the heading -- most white light produced by LEDs is actually just Blue LED light that mixes with yellow light, produced when it passes through a phosphor layer. The first blue LED was demonstrated in 1994! The 'white' LED saw mass production only in the last decade. So a phenomenal discovery indeed that touches physics, electronics and material science, and something that will keep revolutionizing electrical lighting in the coming days.
- analog31 12y ago
  If I'm not mistaken, Nakamura was responsible for the white LED too -- Nichia Chemical made phosphors.
Quequau 12y ago
I think this is really well deserved. Back in the day I was working on R&D for medical diagnostic devices. These kinds of LEDs were a critical part of our sensors. No one but Nichia could make them exactly like we needed and without them we would have never had the success we did. It's just a shame that that the key dude in all this got the shaft for years. The performance of these LEDs was a big deal at the time in a lot of different industries, so it was obvious that lots of money would be flowing around... there really was just no need for anyone to deny him his, well deserved, part in that.
- linker3000 12y ago
  I was working in the visual systems (electronics) R&D lab for a flight sim company when the first blue LED engineering samples became available and we got hold of a few for the princely sum of £30 each! Yes, we had to pay for them - no freebies! How much are they now!
- sudowhodoido 12y ago
  I'm really glad that there is an industrial use for them. Blue ones are used, at least around my area, to decorate things.
  - eli 12y ago
    The "white" LEDs you see in light bulbs in the store are actually blue.
    - jestinjoy1 12y ago
      How? Or is it a mix of Red, Blue and Green?
      - TTPrograms 12y ago
        There are down-converting phosphors on the surface that convert a fraction of the blue light to other wavelengths to get close to white.
tbyehl 12y ago
I've been cursing Shuji Nakamura since about 2005. Suddenly every gizmo had a blue LED brighter than the sun. Took me months to realize that all that blue light was wreaking havoc on my sleep cycle.
- Turing_Machine 12y ago
  That's what duct tape is for. Not joking.
- ableal 12y ago
  "They have no taste" applied in spades to most every consumer electronics company, with one exception that I noticed (yes, Apple). I had a 2007 laptop festooned with about ten of those eye-piercing blue spots, but it's hardly fair to blame the inventor for the poor use of his work. Alfred Nobel had it worse - he did make an explosive ...
- sliverstorm 12y ago
  I miss the antique glowing greens
mkoryak 12y ago
Why did they spell it "funda-mental"?
- scott_karana 12y ago
  It was probably for manual line-breaking on an unsophisticated word processor, and it got by their copy-editor.
Sebpereira 12y ago
It is not groundbreaking at a theoretical level, but its implications in the everyday lives of people seems to be far reaching. It is a signal of how much things have changed in the world, now not concerned with great advances, instead focused on technologies to use resources more efficiently.
phkahler 12y ago
Urban legend? I had heard that while most of the industry struggled to develop a blue LED, someone eventually asked this guy to look in to the problem and he had a solution rather quickly. Like they just had to ask the guy with the right background to solve the problem an viola. Is there any truth to that?
- aortega 12y ago
  No, I think it's a more interesting history. Nakamura basically lived in the lab for months, cooking different materias in a special oven until he came up with the blue led. Then did the same for the green led.
jhallenworld 12y ago
To bring home lighting in practice to within one order of magnitude of 100% luminous efficiency is certainly deserving of the Nobel Prize. It was not so long ago that people had to make due with rush lights: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rushlight http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rushlight I tried to find a graph of inflation adjusted lighting prices, but found some interesting links: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/04/25/306862378/episode-534-the-history-of-light http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/04/25/306862378/episode-... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_lighting_technology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_lighting_technology http://phys.org/news202453100.html http://phys.org/news202453100.html
quarterwave 12y ago
One person who should also have got the Nobel prize for pioneering work on III-V LED's is Nick Holonyak. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Holonyak http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Holonyak

241 points by sasvari 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

pencilcode 12y ago

btw, Nobel priZe

boomskats 12y ago
Did someone call it a priSe? It was only a prise when Obama got the Nobel Peace one.
- PvsNP_ZA 12y ago
  Nope, original spelling of the topic said "price".
  - blisterpeanuts 12y ago
    Autocorrect is wreaking havoc with the language!
  - mturmon 12y ago
    From the OP, the Nobel Price -- SEK 8 million, to be shared equally between the Laureates. ;-)

DodgyEggplant 12y ago

An amazing choice of something that is used daily, which unlike many Nobel price level physics, everybody can relate to. Generations of physics students will be raised by this particular choice.

chton 12y ago
I'm still on the hedge about it. Yes, it's more relate-able and inspiring, but it isn't really a contribution to physics as much as engineering. If they had been given the prize for their underlying work on semiconductors, that would have been a lot more valid. While I'm happy for them, and am in no way qualified to question the Nobel committee, it just doesn't strike me as an "outstanding contribution to the field of physics".
- Osmium 12y ago
  > it just doesn't strike me as an "outstanding contribution to the field of physics" You have to consider it within the context of the intention of the Nobel prize, which is to reward the "invention of greatest benefit to mankind". So perhaps it's not fundamental physics per se, but it's certainly in the spirit of the prize. [Disclaimer: I work on this stuff, and was lucky enough to see Nakamura talk just recently. So I'm definitely biased!] Edit: Also, coming from a background where I've gone through the whole gamut of physics, chemistry, materials science, engineering and the rest, I have to say that there's a tendency to undervalue the contribution from actually going from something that's theoretically possible to actually practical. In some respects, the fundamental physics is the 'easy' part–nice neat equations describing nice neat systems. Actually trying to make them, when you're up against entropy introducing all manner of crystal defects and impurities and what-not, is a whole different story. And it's so complex, and the tools you use so rudimentary, you can very much feel like a blind man feeling around in the dark just trying to understand what's going on, and what you've actually managed to make. To go from that to a functioning, reproducible device? It definitely deserves recognition.
  - DodgyEggplant 12y ago
    Is it possible for you, with the HN forum limits, to describe some such interesting major issues with LED (for a physics illiterate)?
    - Osmium 12y ago
      Sure. I can give a flavour of some of the issues that people are interested in within the nitrides, but it wouldn't be an exhaustive list... So, to start at the beginning: how do we grow these things? At the heart of every LED is a crystal. For blue LEDs, this crystal is gallium nitride (GaN). How do we grow these crystals at scale? This achievement is behind this Nobel prize, but it's far from a solved problem even today. They found out you could grow GaN by flowing hot gasses containing Ga and N on top of an artificial sapphire film, which would act as a template for the crystal to grow. The problem is that GaN crystals and sapphire crystals are slightly different sizes (the gaps between their constituent atoms is different) so they don't match up exactly, and this resulted in a lot of strain and defects in the GaN crystals–but sapphire was the best we had, and it worked. The trouble is, sapphire isn't great: it's expensive and you can only make small crystals. The big push now is to find a way of growing GaN on top of silicon. This would make it a lot easier to grow larger crystals and would also make it a lot easier to incorporate GaN into silicon-based devices. But growing on silicon comes with its own problems, so it's even harder to grow high quality films. Specifically, cracking as the crystal cools from its growth temperature is a big problem because the thermal conductivity of silicon and GaN is so different. There's also a push to try and grow GaN directly from a liquid, which would be more like how we grow silicon 'from scratch' (rather than growing on top of a template). This shows a lot of promise but it's a long way from commercial viability yet. I'll try and come back and comment on some other issues later on if there's interest :)

dbcooper 12y ago

Shuji Nakamura originally received only $200 from Nichia for the invention. He later received an $8.1M settlement. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/12/business/worldbusiness/12light.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/12/business/worldbusiness/12l...

readerrrr 12y ago
I assume that in the USA or even in Europe with a restrictive contract, he would a minor reward at best?

Sharlin 12y ago

Shuji Nakamura was also previously awarded the Finnish Millennium Technology Prize for his work on blue LEDs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Technology_Prize http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Technology_Prize

nnain 12y ago

For those who read only the 'Blue LED' part from the heading -- most white light produced by LEDs is actually just Blue LED light that mixes with yellow light, produced when it passes through a phosphor layer. The first blue LED was demonstrated in 1994! The 'white' LED saw mass production only in the last decade. So a phenomenal discovery indeed that touches physics, electronics and material science, and something that will keep revolutionizing electrical lighting in the coming days.

analog31 12y ago
If I'm not mistaken, Nakamura was responsible for the white LED too -- Nichia Chemical made phosphors.

Quequau 12y ago

I think this is really well deserved. Back in the day I was working on R&D for medical diagnostic devices. These kinds of LEDs were a critical part of our sensors. No one but Nichia could make them exactly like we needed and without them we would have never had the success we did. It's just a shame that that the key dude in all this got the shaft for years. The performance of these LEDs was a big deal at the time in a lot of different industries, so it was obvious that lots of money would be flowing around... there really was just no need for anyone to deny him his, well deserved, part in that.

linker3000 12y ago
I was working in the visual systems (electronics) R&D lab for a flight sim company when the first blue LED engineering samples became available and we got hold of a few for the princely sum of £30 each! Yes, we had to pay for them - no freebies! How much are they now!
sudowhodoido 12y ago
I'm really glad that there is an industrial use for them. Blue ones are used, at least around my area, to decorate things.
- eli 12y ago
  The "white" LEDs you see in light bulbs in the store are actually blue.
  - jestinjoy1 12y ago
    How? Or is it a mix of Red, Blue and Green?
    - TTPrograms 12y ago
      There are down-converting phosphors on the surface that convert a fraction of the blue light to other wavelengths to get close to white.

tbyehl 12y ago

I've been cursing Shuji Nakamura since about 2005. Suddenly every gizmo had a blue LED brighter than the sun. Took me months to realize that all that blue light was wreaking havoc on my sleep cycle.

Turing_Machine 12y ago
That's what duct tape is for. Not joking.
ableal 12y ago
"They have no taste" applied in spades to most every consumer electronics company, with one exception that I noticed (yes, Apple). I had a 2007 laptop festooned with about ten of those eye-piercing blue spots, but it's hardly fair to blame the inventor for the poor use of his work. Alfred Nobel had it worse - he did make an explosive ...
sliverstorm 12y ago
I miss the antique glowing greens

mkoryak 12y ago

Why did they spell it "funda-mental"?

scott_karana 12y ago
It was probably for manual line-breaking on an unsophisticated word processor, and it got by their copy-editor.

Sebpereira 12y ago

It is not groundbreaking at a theoretical level, but its implications in the everyday lives of people seems to be far reaching. It is a signal of how much things have changed in the world, now not concerned with great advances, instead focused on technologies to use resources more efficiently.

phkahler 12y ago

Urban legend? I had heard that while most of the industry struggled to develop a blue LED, someone eventually asked this guy to look in to the problem and he had a solution rather quickly. Like they just had to ask the guy with the right background to solve the problem an viola. Is there any truth to that?

aortega 12y ago
No, I think it's a more interesting history. Nakamura basically lived in the lab for months, cooking different materias in a special oven until he came up with the blue led. Then did the same for the green led.

jhallenworld 12y ago

To bring home lighting in practice to within one order of magnitude of 100% luminous efficiency is certainly deserving of the Nobel Prize. It was not so long ago that people had to make due with rush lights: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rushlight http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rushlight I tried to find a graph of inflation adjusted lighting prices, but found some interesting links: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/04/25/306862378/episode-534-the-history-of-light http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/04/25/306862378/episode-... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_lighting_technology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_lighting_technology http://phys.org/news202453100.html http://phys.org/news202453100.html

quarterwave 12y ago

One person who should also have got the Nobel prize for pioneering work on III-V LED's is Nick Holonyak. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Holonyak http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Holonyak