Akasaki Isamu

Akasaki Isamu (born January 30, 1929, Chiran, Japan—died April 1, 2021, Nagoya) Japanese materials scientist who was awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize for Physics for inventing blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs), paving the way for future innovation. He shared the prize with Japanese materials scientist Amano Hiroshi and Japanese-born American materials scientist Nakamura Shuji.

After Akasaki received a B.S. from Kyōto University in 1952, he worked for Kobe Kogyo Corp. (later named Fujitsu) until 1959. He then attended Nagoya University, where he held several teaching positions while obtaining a doctorate in engineering (1964). He subsequently served as the head of a basic research laboratory at the Matsushita Research Institute Tokyo, Inc., until he returned (1981) to Nagoya University as a professor. In 1992, when Akasaki left Nagoya University, he was made professor emeritus; he then joined the faculty of Meijo University in Nagoya. Nagoya University gave Akasaki the title of distinguished professor in 2004 and named the Akasaki Institute, completed in 2006, in his honour.

Prior to Akasaki’s work in the 1980s, scientists had produced LEDs that emitted red or green light, but blue LEDs had been considered impossible or impractical to make. Akasaki, Amano, and Nakamura succeeded in finding techniques for producing blue LEDs through many years of research on the semiconductor gallium nitride (GaN). (LEDs are semiconductor diodes that contain an interface between two types of semiconductor materials—n-type and p-type materials—which are formed by doping [introducing] different impurities into each.) When excited by electrons, GaN emits blue and ultraviolet light; however, growing usable GaN crystals was a challenge. A major breakthrough was Akasaki and Amano’s discovery in 1986 that high-quality GaN crystals could be created by placing an aluminum nitride layer on a sapphire substrate and then growing the crystals on that. The second breakthrough in Akasaki and Amano’s work came in 1989 when they discovered that p-type GaN could be formed by doping GaN crystals with magnesium atoms. They saw that the p-type layer glowed much brighter when they studied it under a electron microscope, thus showing that electron beams would improve the material. That p-type material was then used with existing n-type material to form blue LEDs in 1992. (Working independently at the same time, Nakamura made blue LEDs with slightly different techniques.) The combination of blue, green, and red LEDs produces a light that appears white to the eye and that can be produced for much less energy than that from incandescent and fluorescent lamps.

Akasaki continued research into GaN materials through the 1990s and early 2000s (blue LEDs became commercially available in 1993). His work helped lead to the development of blue semiconductor lasers, which proved useful for high-capacity optical-media devices such as Blu-ray disc players.

Akasaki was the recipient of numerous honours. In addition to the Nobel Prize, his other notable awards included the Kyoto Prize (2009) and the Draper Prize (2015).