15 September 2011

UCSB’s Shuji Nakamura to receive Emmy Award

The US National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) has named Shuji Nakamura, professor of materials and of electrical and computer engineering at University of California - Santa Barbara, among the winners of the 63rd Annual Technology and Engineering Emmy Awards. The award will be presented during the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2012) in Las Vegas in January.

The awards honor outstanding achievement in technical or engineering development, and recognize individuals, companies, and scientific or technical organizations for developments in engineering technology that have significantly impacted broadcast television. Nakamura is being recognized for his role in the development of large-venue, large-screen direct-view color displays.

Nakamura, who is also co-director of the campus’s Solid State Lighting and Energy Center, is the first UCSB faculty member to receive an Emmy Award, and one of only a small number of academics to be so honored since the Technology and Engineering awards were established in 1948.

“I am very pleased to receive the Technology and Engineering Emmy Award for my work leading to high-efficiency blue, green, and white LEDs, which are now used in backlighting LCD TVs, mobile devices, large-screen direct-view color video screens, and, eventually, general illumination,” says Nakamura.

“Since professor Nakamura’s invention of the first bright blue light-emitting diode in 1993, white LED lighting has become a reality,” comments UCSB chancellor Henry T. Yang. “His inventions and discoveries have led to an unprecedented series of breakthroughs in physics, materials science, and technology, including high-density optical data storage, energy-saving solid-state lighting and displays, and even an ultraviolet water purification process,” he adds.

“By making it possible to bring affordable, energy-efficient lighting to developing countries, professor Nakamura has also made a tremendous humanitarian contribution to our world,” Yang continues. “I am honored to congratulate him on this exciting Emmy Award, which serves as yet another testament to the far-reaching impact of his achievements and contributions to our global society.”

Nakamura joined the UCSB faculty in 2000 and was appointed to the Cree Chair in the Solid State Lighting and Energy Center in 2001. He is widely recognized as a pioneer in light emitters based on the wide-bandgap semiconductor material gallium nitride (GaN) and its alloys with aluminum and indium.

Before joining UCSB, Nakamura worked in research for Japan’s Nichia Chemical where, in the early 1990s, he single-handedly initiated the development of novel vapor-phase epitaxial growth techniques to obtain single-crystal GaN heteroepitaxial thin films with excellent structural and electrical properties, notes UCSB. Achievements included the development of the blue laser. At UCSB, Nakamura continues to develop GaN thin-film technology.

In 2007, led by Nakamura, a team of researchers in the Solid State Lighting and Energy Center at UCSB achieved lasing operation in nonpolar GaN, and demonstrated the first nonpolar blue-violet laser diodes.

Nakamura earned his undergraduate, master’s and doctoral degrees at Japan’s University of Tokushima. He has received awards including the Millennium Technology Prize, two Japan Society of Applied Physics awards, Nikkei Best Products and Excellent Products awards, a Society of Information Display Special Recognition Award, the IEEE Laser and Electro-Optics Society Engineering Achievement Award, the Materials Research Society Medal, the IEEE Jack A. Morton Award, and the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Engineering. He also has been elected to membership in the US National Academy of Engineering.

Tags: Shuji Nakamura LEDs

Visit: http://sslec.ucsb.edu/nakamura