Today's article will begin with a Japanese engineer, Shuji Nakamur, who, along with Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano, won the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics on October 7, 2014. Surprisingly, he received the award for his work on high-brightness cyan light-emitting diodes, the blue LED light sources we often see today.
Isn't it a bit unbelievable that a blue LED could win a Nobel Prize? Logically speaking, before Shuji Nakamura invented the blue LED, the industry had already invented red and green LEDs, but no one won a prize for them. Why is the blue LED so special?
A: For the manufacturing processes of that time, producing blue LEDs was extremely difficult. Many people gave up after the invention of red and green LEDs. Shuji Nakamura's relentless persistence led to the eventual discovery of blue LEDs, a momentous event in the LED world. This meant that the three primary colors of LEDs (red, green, and blue) were finally complete, giving birth to white LED light, which was then widely adopted in the lighting field. Simultaneously, the completion of the three primary colors enabled full-color display technology.
Having discussed this remarkable individual, let's look at a very simple formula:
λ≈1240/Eg(nm)
λ: Wavelength of light
For example: Bandgap of semiconductor materials
This formula tells us that different colors (wavelengths) of light originate from different LED raw materials. The commonly used LED colors and doped materials are shown in the table below:
Therefore, compared with traditional incandescent bulbs, LEDs not only have lower power consumption and longer lifespan, but also, thanks to current manufacturing processes, a variety of colors of LEDs are available. Let's take a look at the uses of different colored LEDs .
White
White light has perfect color characteristics and is currently most commonly used to replace traditional lighting sources. However, it can impair vision adapted to low light, and the human eye needs time to readjust when the light source is turned off.
Red light
Red light is typically used for night vision. Red light does not cause your pupils to constrict excessively, so your eyes do not need to readjust to the darkness once the red light is turned off.
Huang Guang
Yellow light combines some of the advantages of red and white light. Its greatest advantage is that it can reduce glare and reflections that cause eye fatigue from prolonged lighting.
Green light
Green light can also be used for night vision, especially for reading maps or charts at night. Green light is less bright than red light, but it is still easily detected by the human eye.
Blue light
Blue light increases the level of contrast, making it popular with military personnel. It can also be used as backstage lighting in theaters and performances.
Infrared light
Infrared light has wavelengths that cannot be detected by the human eye, so it is often used in conjunction with night vision equipment.
Ultraviolet light
Due to its unique wavelength, ultraviolet light is commonly used in medical sterilization or anti-counterfeiting label identification.
With the advent of Industry 4.0 and artificial intelligence, LEDs will also evolve towards human-centered smart lighting, focusing not only on the visual effects of lighting but also on non-visual effects. For smart lighting in the IoT era, the focus will be more on the application of IoT data.
From a technical perspective, smart lighting mainly emphasizes rule-based control and automatic control based on environmental factors and human needs. Intelligent lighting, on the other hand, makes lighting more intelligent, capable of thinking and learning like intelligent beings, and possessing emotions, making lighting smarter and more humane. It also needs to be combined with big data processing technology and wait for the improvement of artificial intelligence technology and industry to transcend lighting itself and realize the development from smart lighting to intelligent lighting.
From the perspective of the objects being connected and controlled, in the era of the Internet of Things, connecting everything is possible. Smart lighting not only provides people with a means of illumination, but can also interact and control other systems. Light has become a new intelligent language, providing a broader range of services beyond lighting.
Looking back at the development of LEDs, with the continuous development and progress of technology, LEDs will add more brilliant colors to human society and even provide highly intelligent light source solutions.
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