History of the elusive blue LED

[Snattlerake]

It's a little over 30 minutes but it is a great explanation of why the blue LED was so hard to make. Red and Green LEDs were simple. Without the blue LED, we would never have a white LED and thus the creation of the blue LED grew into an 80 Billion dollar industry.

I like little videos like this. He fought the corporate structure that tried to kill his project for years due to prior faulty research.

 

[gl55]

I watched that a few weeks ago. And when it was all said and done he made very little money for his work to make it happen.

 

[Snattlerake]

I watched that a few weeks ago. And when it was all said and done he made very little money for his work to make it happen.

Yeah, he received a patent raise of $60K but when he quit and went to CREE, he was sued by his former company and he filed a countersuit. It was for a few million but the jury awarded 20 times that. On appeal, the amount was reduced to just enough to pay his lawyers. Zero sum gain for a half of a lifetime and the blue LED.

 

[p238shooter]

Very nifty information. I would suspect there are similar things we take for granted and never give a thought to have similar stories. Thanks for sharing.

 

[DDriller]

That is an interesting video but most of that stuff is way over my pay grade.

 

[mtnboomr]

True white is even harder to make than blue. As the frequency of light heads toward white, it gets very high-pitched. The higher the pitch, the more heat it creates. White LEDs are the hottest. This meant the ballast to power them, had to be redesigned to stand the heat.