Light-emitting diodes: A case study in engineering research
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Energy Sector Analysis
Solid-state lighting has staggering implications for the world’s energy and resource use, since artificial lighting consumes 16% of the world’s electricity. LED lamps save resources and labor because they last up to 100,000 hours, compared to 1000 hours for incandescent bulbs and 10,000 hours for fluorescent lights.
Light-emitting diodes: A case study in engineering research By Prachi Patel Feature Editor Jeffrey Tsao
T
he traditional model of scientific discovery goes as such: Scientists plug away in laboratories, making fundamental discoveries and crafting theories to study and understand the physical world. Engineers then take over, advancing that fundamental knowledge and putting it to work by inventing practical devices. But often the path is not that well defined or linear. Science and technology are symbiotic. Discovery can go both ways. The most effective and efficient advances often follow a cyclical path where science and technology feed each other. And engineering can many times lead to discoveries, with scientists gaining insights from devices and applications. The steam engine, for instance, was developed before the elucidation of thermodynamic principles. Alexander Graham Bell, an engineer, invented the telephone armed with only a rudimentary knowledge of electricity and signal transmission. From his namesake, Bell Labs, came one of the modern world’s most important innovations and a prominent example of scientists and engineers working together: the discovery of the transistor effect and the technological invention of the transistor itself. And sometimes breakthroughs come about from engineering research leading to, and even contradicting, established science. The discovery of the bright blue gallium nitride light-emitting diode (LED) is the perfect example. Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano, and Shuji Nakamura developed the blue LED in the early 1990s after others had given up, doggedly pursuing technological research despite skepticism, discouragement, and a prevailing scientific view that conflicted with their findings. “They were flying in the face of conventional wisdom,” said journalist Bob Johnstone, who recently wrote the book, LED: A History of the Future of Lighting. The impact of blue LEDs cannot be exaggerated enough. Without it, we would not have the bright white LED lamps that have upended the way we light our world. Until its development, red and green LEDs had been around for three decades, used in indicator lamps and numeric displays. Today, high-efficiency, long-lasting white LED lamps light up buildings, streets, and TV screens. As the Nobel Foundation said when they awarded the researchers the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics, “They succeeded where everyone else had failed. Their inventions were revolutionary. Incandescent light bulbs lit the 20th century; the 21st century will be lit by LED lamps.” Solid-state lighting has staggering implications for the world’s energy and resource use, since artificial lighting
consumes 16% of the world’s electricity. The US
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