LED LED: "kaishanzushi is in infancy"

Beijing time on October 11th, 50 years ago, in 1962, Nick Holonyak (Nick Holonyak Jr.) and its Ge team invented the light-emitting diode (Light Emitting Diode, LED). Although today LED light is almost everywhere -- from the bridge to the headlights to the keychain flashlight, research work using looks brighter than the sun light LED -- but its initial development is full of uncertainty and competition with each other. At the time, LED is a direct result of another pioneering technology - laser, and in the following days, LED has been continued evolution, has now become the light of our family, we are also used to transfer data.

"Connection" magazine design channel interviewed at Illinois University Professor Ho Lun Yake, asked about the history of LED to him, and also discusses the future of LED. The following is a summary of the interview:

Nick Holonyak invented the first visible light emitting diode in 1962

Wired: what was LED's initial market reaction?

Holonyak: when I realized that I was on the road to developing LED, I have used my own alloy to beat the world in the visible laser. An editor of reader's Digest (Reader), s, called me in 1963 to point out the fact that LED will eventually cover the entire spectrum of the white light as a source of the Digest. That's what happened at the time, but I think it happened as long as 50 years.

Wired: laser?

What a Lun: was there a lot of speculation that the light, may not have coherence, is like a microwave signal; or, if the light is coherent, eyes may not see, because before the eye always only see incoherent light.

While other people think that Ruby cannot become a light source, but a man named Theodore Doll Maiman (Theodore Maiman) the scientists then propose an idea, which can be used as the ruby maser, but no one was produced by ruby laser. He succeeded in the end, I think it was in 1960, in May, when he demonstrated how a laser beam was generated. After he shows the first laser beam, all began to break out of the cage.

In 1962, Robert Reddick (Robert Rediker) under the leadership of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory (Lincoln Laboratories) said, they made a lot of self luminous diode emits infrared emission, but also to use the diode I line signal. When they released a report on the diode at a conference in July, many of us said that it would be possible to turn it into coherent light, such as a laser

Wired: what is the difference between what he has done?

Where is the man: Yake Lun Mei laser, it is a kind of similar to those used in flash photography. You can release a strong beam of white light, then the beam of white light ruby rod is absorbed, and then all red rubies are chromium atoms is promoted to a higher state, can be released into a laser beam. It is a primary process that promotes the secondary process. All the light you see is a source of heat, and the heat causes the atoms to vibrate so as to release some light. It is better to say that it is a heater, rather than it.

What I call a laser is a light coming from one end and then coming out of the other. In this way, it is a light generator.

Wired: how big was the original LED?

What's a very small. Of course, you can make it bigger, and people have done it. You know, in the field of semiconductor applications, the semiconductor will always win, sweeping the ordinary electronic products.

Wired: did LED look like today?

What you see today: Aaron Yake LED is at a low price on the platform, but that it is just a form of. In fact, LED can be made in a variety of forms, varieties and geometry can be different.

Wired: what else can we do?

What Lun Yake: can do a lot of things to make it more suitable. We're still looking for a better way to make crystals, to do chemical research, to make everything work.

I made the first alloy in general electric. Then I made some other semiconductor alloys, they got better - that's what you can see now, they can emit red, orange, and yellow. The others then switched to other forms of the alloy, which allowed them to emit blue light, but they had more difficulty in converting the blue light to green light. Moreover, no one has been able to solve the problem of getting yellow.

Wired: but after these developments, LED has become the mainstream of the use of light.

What's a: on the whole, LED is beginning to take over from the special lighting market, lighting to all types of lighting are so. For now, the whole world is using the form and color of different LED