Shuji Nakamura

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Shuji Nakamura

Shuji Nakamura ( Japanese 中 村 修 二 , Nakamura Shūji ; born May 22, 1954 in Seto , Ehime , Japan ) is an American electrical engineer and materials scientist of Japanese origin and developer of the first blue light-emitting diode (LED), made of gallium nitride (GaN), a large band gap semiconductor . He is a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara and, with Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano, won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2014.

Live and act

Nakamura studied at Tokushima University , where he obtained his bachelor's degree in 1977 and then his master's degree in electrical engineering in 1979. After graduation he stayed in Tokushima and worked for the then small company Nichia . From 1993 Nakamura was head of the research department at Nichia.

During its time developed by Nichia Nakamura the first very bright gallium nitride - light-emitting diode to emit blue light, which has the advantage. These LEDs have been produced since 1993. In this development, Nakamura worked independently of Akasaki and Amano from Nagoya University and did not begin work on it until 1988, much later than Akasaki and Amano. Like this, he uses metal-organic gas phase epitaxy (MOVPE) for the production of the GaN crystals. Another important step towards blue light emitting diodes was the p-doping of GaN with the support of electron irradiation, which Akasaki and Amano discovered and which was later explained by Nakamura. In 1994 he was awarded a PhD from Tokushima University. In addition to the blue GaN LED, Nakamura also developed the green indium gallium nitride light emitting diode (InGaN LED) and finally a white LED. In the mid-1990s, he also developed a blue laser .

Nakamura left Japan in 1999 and accepted a position as professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara .

In 2001, Nakamura sued his former employer, Nichia. His premium for the development of the GaN LED of 20,000 yen (around 150 euros) seemed inadequate to him. Nakamura asked for 20 billion yen (150 million euros) and initially won. After Nichia appealed, the two parties agreed on a bonus of 840 million yen (€ 6 million), the highest bonus ever paid in Japan.

Nakamura has been an honorary professor at the University of Bremen since 2004 .

He is a US citizen.

Awards

In 2000 he received the Carl Zeiss Research Prize and in 2006 the Millennium Technology Prize . In 2014 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics together with Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano . In the same year he was also honored with the Japanese Order of Culture . In 2015 Nakamura received the Charles Stark Draper Prize and the Global Energy Prize , and in 2020 the NAS Award for the Industrial Application of Science . In 2017 an asteroid was named after him: (227152) Shujinakamura . In 2015 he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame .

Publications

  • Shuji Nakamura, Gerhard Fasol, Stephen J. Pearton: The Blue Laser Diode: The Complete Story. Springer, 2000, ISBN 3-540-66505-6 .
  • Shuji Nakamura, Gerhard Fasol: The blue diode laser - GaN light emitters and lasers. Springer, 1997, ISBN 3-540-61590-3 .
  • Shuji Nakamura, Shigefusa F. Chichibu: Introduction to nitride semiconductor blue lasers and light emitting diodes. CRC Press, 2000, ISBN 0-7484-0836-3 .

Broadcast reports

Web links

Commons : Shuji Nakamura  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Physics World, October 7, 2014 on the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics
  2. Shuji Nakamura now honorary professor at the University of Bremen: Big win for Bremen as a science location. Press release on the honorary professorship in Bremen, February 19, 2004.
  3. Washington Post, October 7, 2014 on the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics
  4. WINNER: SHUJI NAKAMURA.
  5. ^ Press release of the Nobel Committee of the Royal Academy of Science , nobelprize.org, accessed on October 7, 2014