11 December 2013

Soraa founder Shuji Nakamura receives lighting industry honors

Soraa Inc of Fremont, CA, USA, which develops solid-state lighting technology built on ‘GaN-on-GaN’ (gallium nitride on gallium nitride) substrates, says that one of its founders Dr Shuji Nakamura, was recently honored by Lux Review Magazine as its ‘Person of the Year’ and was inducted into Electronic Design’s Hall of Fame for his outstanding work in the lighting industry.

Jointly organized by Lux Magazine and the Lighting Industry Association, the Lux Awards are designed to reward both creativity and sustainability. In conferring the award, Lux Magazine referred to Nakamura as “the man who single-handedly created the current LED revolution”.

At the end of each year, the editors of Electronic Design select a group of new inductees based on level of contribution, industry impact, lasting achievement and feedback from its readers for the publication’s Engineering Hall of Fame. “Shuji Nakamura enabled an entire industry based on high-brightness LEDs replacing incandescent, gas-discharge, and fluorescent lighting in vehicles, homes, businesses, and outdoors,” comment the editors. “He did it by developing a practical way to manufacture efficient blue and ultraviolet LEDs, which are the basis for ‘white’ LEDs.”

“Creating efficient lighting products that do not compromise on performance, offer the highest quality available, and greatly reduce energy waste has always been a driving principle of my work and was the motivation for creating Soraa,” says Nakamura, who has been professor in the Materials Department of the College of Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) since 2000 and is currently also research director of the Solid State Lighting & Energy Center.

Soraa was founded in 2007 by UCSB professors Shuji Nakamura (developer of the blue laser and LED), Steven DenBaars (founder of Nitres) and James Speck (of UCSB’s College of Engineering) on the basis that GaN-on-GaN LEDs would produce more light per area of LED and be more cost-effective than technology based on established foreign substrates such as sapphire or silicon carbide (SiC). Now, Soraa’s LEDs emit more light per LED material than any other LED; handle more electric current per area than any other LED; and the firm’s crystals are up to 1000 times more precise than any other LED crystal, it is claimed.

Nakamura obtained B.E., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Tokushima, Japan in 1977, 1979 and 1994, respectively. Awards for his work include the Nishina Memorial Award (1996), the Materials Research Society Medal Award (1997), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Jack A. Morton Award, the British Rank Prize (1998), the Benjamin Franklin Medal Award (2002), the Millennium Technology Prize (2006), the Czochralski Award (2007), the Prince of Asturias Award for Technical Scientific Research (2008), The Harvey Award (2009), and the Technology & Engineering Emmy Award (2012) awarded by The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS). He was elected as a member of the US National Academy of Engineering in 2003. Nakamura holds more than 100 patents and has published more than 400 papers in his field.

Tags: Soraa GaN-on-GaN

Visit: www.luxreview.com/news/94/lux-awards-2013-the-winners

Visit: http://electronicdesign.com/engineering-hall-fame/

Visit: www.soraa.com