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History of LEDs, short courseHave you ever heard the phrase &#;there is always room for improvement&#;? Well, this applies to LED development more than you think. In the history of LEDs, progress has sometimes been slow, but in recent years it has been very rapid.
Due to their increased popularity in the 21st century, most people assume that light emitting diodes are a new innovation. But this is not entirely true, the technology has been developed over many years.
Electroluminescence, the principle behind LEDs, was first discovered by Henry Joseph Round in . But it wasn&#;t until that engineer Nick Holonyak used science to create LEDs that produce visible light as we know it.
LEDs are now everywhere, from street lights and counters to TV remotes and traffic lights. The path from the circuit board to the ceiling light in your home is not entirely straight.
Let&#;s go back to the beginning of led history.
Who invented LED lighting?Nick Holonyak invented the LED, if only one person should be named in LED history.
The development of LEDs is best thought of as a collaborative effort. In the last two decades, technology has evolved enormously, there have been commercial leaps.
Many people have contributed to the science behind modern LED lights. The history of the main Nick Holonyak.
Nick was a tech-savvy young man growing up in a small town in the US. He spent his childhood with his father&#;s Ford Model T. Nick&#;s father encouraged Nick to pursue a career in electrical engineering. So Nick completed his Bachelor&#;s, Master&#;s and PhD degrees at the University of Illinois.
After graduating in , Nick worked for General Electric, a manufacturer of fluorescent and halogen lamps. Holonyak&#;s big breakthrough came in , when he was commissioned to create an infrared laser. During his experiment, Nick accidentally created a red LED.
While other scientists had been studying electroluminescence for years, Nick&#;s LED was the first to emit light in the visible light spectrum. In other words, it was the first to produce light that people could see. The previous ones were all infrared light that was invisible to the eye.
Within a year, General Electrics was selling the invented bulb for over $200 per bulb. In a article in Chosen Fires, he predicted that soon LEDs would eventually cover the entire spectrum of light and replace Edison&#;s light bulbs. It took 50 years&#; but the led history was foretold.
When was the LED invented?Thanks to Nick Holonyak, the first visible light LED was born in . But it wasn&#;t a random invention, so where does the science behind LEDs come from?
Surprisingly, the history of LEDs is over 100 years old!
In , British scientist Henry Joseph Round discovered the phenomena of electroluminescence. He discovered that when you apply 10 volts of electricity to a silicon carbide crystal, it emits light. This happens because the positively charged electrons meet the negatively charged electrons and cause a reaction.
The discovery was groundbreaking, but unfortunately the yellow light Henry created was too dim to be of any real use.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._J._Round
Scientists continued to study electroluminescence throughout the first half of the 20th century. The term was officially coined by George Destriau in .
First, the Russian scientist Oleg Vladimirovich Losev noticed the potential of electroluminescence. After observing the light emissions of zinc oxide and silicon carbide, Losev published papers between and that introduced the LED and its potential applications.
Losev wrote in his patent &#;Light Relay&#;:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleg_Losev
&#;The proposed invention exploits the well-known phenomenon of luminescence and the use of such a detector in an optical relay for high-speed telegraph and communications, image transmission&#; &#;
Like many scientists, Losev was well ahead of his time.
How did LED light become popular?This raises the question. If Led lights were invented in , why didn&#;t they evolve until the mid-s? It all depends on the money. There was a long creative hiatus in the history of LEDs.
When General Electrics started selling red LEDs in , they were selling for over $200 per bulb. This was absurd compared to the $5-20 that people were used to paying for incandescent bulbs. In addition, the Led light was not white. Nowadays, LED lights are available for only 2 Euro at the local store&#; The actual mass production started in the s.
In the s began to happenHerb Maruska and Wally Rhines invent the blue LED at Stanford University. Together with their professor David Stevenson, they are developing the technique further and have also achieved a green light. This Magnesium-Gallium Nitride technology is patented and to this day is the basis of blue led light technology.
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By the mid-s, Fairchild Optoelectronics had mass-produced the LED, but the problem with LEDs was still their low luminous efficacy.
Over time, large companies such as IBM and HP started using LEDs in calculators and other electronics. LEDs started to become common as small indicator lights.
As demand grew, production volumes increased. Mass production allowed LEDs to be used in new products.
The history of LEDs from the s onwardsIn the s, the development of gallium aluminium arsenide-based LEDs began. The big manufacturers followed suit and in the late s Theodorode Moustakas invented a new simpler way to produce new high (compared to previous&#;) light producing LEDs. The invention was patented in
Building on the previous invention, Shuji Nakamura (at the same time Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano) develops the first high brightness blue LED using gallium nitride and its applications, which could also be exploited commercially. These individuals were later awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics as the inventors of the modern blue LED.
The modern silicon based Led circuit was developed in - and in the &#;s all the big ones: Osram, Cree, Philips are developing Led circuits in competition. The history of LEDs is still writing itself.
White lightAlthough white light can be created using individual red, green and blue LEDs, this leads to poor colour rendering because only three narrow wavelength bands of light are emitted separately. The advent of high-efficiency blue LEDs was quickly followed by the development of the first white LED.
In this device (known as &#;YAG&#;), a phosphor coating doped with serum produces yellow light through fluorescence. The combination of that yellow and the remaining blue light looks white to the eye.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yttrium_aluminium_garnet
The first white LEDs were expensive and inefficient. Since then, the light output has increased exponentially. Developments have been led by, for example. Panasonic, Nichia and Samsung.
A laboratory experiment in managed to produce 303 lumens per watt and an LED circuit that theoretically lasts 100,000 hours. However, to do this in practice would require such massive cooling that it makes no commercial sense. Today, LED circuits produce 100-170 lumens per watt in a finished luminaire, depending on the application.
But Led is still evolving..
It has taken a long time to develop, with numerous developers over 100 years.
Today, there are LED circuits everywhere. The device you are reading this on contains a led screen, the room you are in contains led lamps&#; So Led is no longer history but the present.
Light-emitting diode (LED) is right now the most energy-efficient lighting technology available for use in commercial and business purposes, and it is only natural that it is also one of the most rapidly-developing technologies. LED is a kind of solid-state lighting where a semiconductor converts electricity to light (without producing heat) usually in a small area of about 1 square millimeter or less (the diode). So in an LED lamp, there are actually multiple light-emitting diodes. The light that generates from an LED projects in one direction, which does away with the need to use diffusers and reflectors.
The history of LED lighting begins with the discover of electroluminescence. The concept of electroluminescence lies at the heart of the development of LED lights. In , Henry Joseph Round observed this phenomenon in Silicon Carbide. However, the yellow light emitted was too faint to be of any real use. No further research was conducted into this phenomenon then. In , Bernhard Gudden and Robert Wichard Pohl used Zinc Sulphide with Copper to replicate the phenomenon.
But once again, the light emitted by this material was too faint to be of any practical use. Research again stops on this phenomenon. The term &#;electroluminescence&#; was coined by George Destriau in when he published a report on the phenomenon of light being produced by Zinc Sulphide powder when electric current was conducted through it.
In , Robert Biard and Gary Pittman invented an infra-red LED while they were working for Texas Instruments. However, this light did not have any practical use because it was invisible to human beings. This was an accidental invention because Biard and Pittman were actually working on a laser diode.
Experimenting with the use of the semiconductor Gallium Arsenide that had started during the s subsequently led to the development of the very first LED with practical use. In , Nick Holonyak, Jr. invented the first LED that could produce visible red light. He invented these red diodes during his employment with General Electric. For his achievement, Holonyak has earned the title of &#;Father of the Light-Emitting Diode.&#;
Experimentation with the type of semiconductor that could produce more efficient LEDs continued throughout the s. In the early years of this decade, LEDs were made using Gallium Arsenide Phosphide on a Gallium Arsenide substrate. Using Gallium Phosphide as the substrate increased the efficiency of the lights and brighter red LEDs came into being. Soon afterwards, orange LEDs begin production.
In , M. George Craford of the Monsanto Company used two Gallium Phosphide chips&#;one red and one green&#;to make LEDs that emitted a pale yellow light. Incidentally, Monsanto Company is the first company to produce LED lights on a large scale and for mass consumption. Craford also invented an LED that emitted about ten times brighter light than Holonyak&#;s version.
During the mid-s, scientists started using only Gallium Phosphide to make LEDs that emitted a pale green light. These experiments resulted in improved versions of LEDs by the end of the decade. These LEDs could produce pure green light.
The use of LED lights became popular during this decade when Fairchild Optoelectronics began to produce low-cost devices.
Continuous and intensive research and development work into the LED technology led to the development of the first generation of super-bright red, yellow, and green LEDs in the early years of the s. In the early s, scientists experimented with Indium Gallium Aluminum Phosphide as the semiconductor material to produce ultra-bright orange-red, orange, green, and yellow LEDs.
In , Shuji Nakamura invents the ultra-bright blue LEDs using Gallium Nitride. Just afterwards, he develops high-intensity blue and green LEDs using Indium Gallium Nitride. These ultra-bright blue LEDs led the foundation for the development of cost-efficient and supremely functional white LED lights that are now commonly installed in commercial and manufacturing spaces, as shown in the image below. Scientists discovered that by coating the blue light-emitting chip with fluorescent phosphors, the diode could be made to emit bright white light.
The results produced by the white LEDs were impressive, and the U.S. Department of Energy encouraged the development of the white LED technology keeping in mind the needs of business owners to light up their commercial spaces with cost-efficient solutions. The result is that today&#;s LEDs lights are six to seven times more efficient than the traditional incandescent bulbs. The LED lights use an impressive 80 percent less energy than their incandescent counterparts. They also last 25 times as long. LED lights are cost-efficient for installation on a large scale.
Meanwhile, research into LED technology continues. There are right now LEDs that emit pure violet and even ultra-violet &#;black&#; light. The increased energy efficiency of LED lights has prompted business owners to use these on a large scale in their offices, industrial operations, and commercial developments to invoke more cost-savings.
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[caption id="attachment_261" align="alignright" width="300"] The history of LED lighting shows that light emitting diodes were first available in the s as indicator lights. source: Wikipedia[/caption][caption id="attachment_365" align="alignright" width="300"] A 100 watt corn lamp from 3BL.[/caption]
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