Soraa founder honoured today with Nobel Prize in Physics

Soraa LED lighting company founder Shuji Nakamura will be honoured this afternoon with the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Professor Nakamura shares the Nobel Prize with Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano and will receive the award in Stockholm. The Nobel Laureates were rewarded for inventing a new energy-efficient and environment-friendly light source – the blue light-emitting diode (LED).

Professor Nakamura went on to found Soraa, a pioneering company that produces excellent full spectrum LED lighting solutions.

Soraa are leaders in the design and manufacture of lamps using LEDs built from pure gallium nitride substrates (GaN on GaN™). Soraa’s signature elements of Simply Perfect™ Light, powered by its brilliant LED technology, shift the landscape completely.

SaveMoneyCutCarbon partners with the company to provide these innovative lights to the retail and hospitality sectors, museums and galleries – and more.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, in making the announcement said that: “In the spirit of Alfred Nobel the Prize rewards an invention of greatest benefit to mankind; using blue LEDs, white light can be created in a new way. With the advent of LED lamps we now have more long-lasting and more efficient alternatives to older light sources.”

The Academy goes on to say that when the trio of researchers produced bright blue light beams from their semi-conductors in the early 1990s, they triggered a fundamental transformation of lighting technology. Red and green diodes had been around for a long time but without blue light, white lamps could not be created. Despite considerable efforts, both in the scientific community and in industry, the blue LED had remained a challenge for three decades.

The announcement is worth quoting in full as it captures the extraordinary scope and benefit of the LED light invention: “They succeeded where everyone else had failed. Akasaki worked together with Amano at the University of Nagoya, while Nakamura was employed at Nichia Chemicals, a small company in Tokushima. Their inventions were revolutionary. Incandescent light bulbs lit the 20th century; the 21st century will be lit by LED lamps.

“White LED lamps emit a bright white light, are long-lasting and energy-efficient. They are constantly improved, getting more efficient with higher luminous flux (measured in lumen) per unit electrical input power (measured in watt). The most recent record is just over 300 lm/W, which can be compared to 16 for regular light bulbs and close to 70 for fluorescent lamps.

“As about one fourth of world electricity consumption is used for lighting purposes, the LEDs contribute to saving the Earth’s resources. Materials consumption is also diminished as LEDs last up to 100,000 hours, compared to 1,000 for incandescent bulbs and 10,000 hours for fluorescent lights.

“The LED lamp holds great promise for increasing the quality of life for over 1.5 billion people around the world who lack access to electricity grids: due to low power requirements it can be powered by cheap local solar power.

“The invention of the efficient blue LED is just twenty years old, but it has already contributed to create white light in an entirely new manner to the benefit of us all.”

The awards ceremony takes place at the Stockholm Concert Hall, Sweden, on 10 December every year, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death. The Nobel Prize in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature and the Prize in Economic Sciences are awarded to the Nobel Laureates.

You can watch the awards ceremony live this afternoon here.

Find out more about Soraa lighting here.