News: LEDs
8 March 2024
Optica’s Holonyak Award for Boston University’s Ted Moustakas
Theodore Moustakas (ECE, MSE, Physics) — Professor Emeritus and Distinguished Professor of Photonics and Optoelectronics at Boston University (BU) — has been awarded the Nick Holonyak Jr Award by Optica (formerly the Optical Society of America, OSA) for his pioneering contributions to nitride semiconductor materials and optical devices that helped build the foundation for efficient blue and ultraviolet (UV) light-emitting diodes (LEDs).
Moustakas, who joined Boston University in 1987, discovered and patented methods for making gallium nitride (GaN) films with high crystalline quality, which led to the development of blue LEDs and, eventually, white LEDs. The latter paved the way for modern smartphone and computer screens, and kicked off the ongoing transition from incandescent to LED bulbs (which now account for nearly half of the illumination market, according to a federal survey).
Intellectual property related to Moustakas’ discoveries has been licensed by Boston University to more than 40 companies around the globe, including Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and Sony. Moustakas himself co-founded two companies: UV LED maker RayVio and water sterilization product maker LARQ.
Picture: Boston University professor Ted Moustakas.
Moustakas cites Holonyak’s “distinguished contributions to the field of optics through the development of semiconductor-based light-emitting diodes and lasers” as an inspiration during his entire career.
“The Nick Holonyak Award is one of the most prestigious awards in the semiconductor field, and Ted has more than revolutionized the field — so this recognition is, in fact, overdue,” comments Distinguished Professor of Engineering Siddharth Ramachandran (ECE, MSE, Physics), an Optica Fellow.
Moustakas holds 41 US patents and has presented 138 invited, keynote and plenary talks in national and international conferences. The 363 papers he has authored in technical journals have been cited more than 19,000 times. A prime mover behind the creation of the BU Photonics Center and the BU College of Engineering’s Materials Science and Engineering Division, Moustakas was named Boston University Innovator of the Year in 2013.
In addition to awarding him the Holonyak honors this year, Optica named Moustakas a fellow in 2021. Moustakas is also a fellow of the American Physical Society, the Electrochemical Society, the Materials Research Society, a life fellow of IEEE, and a charter fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.
Boston’s Moustakas awarded $1.5m to develop handheld UV laser
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