Beijing time on October 11th news, 50 years ago, in 1962, Nick Holonyak Jr. and his team at General Electric invented Light Emitting Diode (LED). Although LED light is almost everywhere from bridges to headlights to keychain flashlights, it uses LED light that looks brighter than the sun, but its initial development is full of uncertainty and competition. research work. At the time, LED was the direct result of another pioneering technology laser, and in the days that followed, LEDs continued to evolve and have now become the source of illumination for our homes and are used to transmit our data.
The Wired magazine design channel interviewed Helen Yack, now a professor at the University of Illinois, and asked him about the history of LEDs and the future of LEDs. The following is a summary of the content of this interview:
"Connecting": What is the initial market reaction of LED?
He Lunak: When I realized that I was also on the road to developing LEDs, I had beaten the whole world in the visible laser field with my own alloy. An editor of ReadersDigest called me in February 1963 and pointed out the fact that LEDs would eventually cover the entire spectrum and become a source of white light. That was what happened at the time, but I think this happened like it was not as long as 50 years.
Wired: Laser?
He Lunak: There were a lot of speculations at the time that light might not be coherent, just like a microwave signal; or, if light energy is coherent, it could not be seen by the human eye, because before this, the human eye has always been Only incoherent light can be seen.
Although others thought that ruby ​​could not be a light source, a scientist named Theodore Maiman came up with the idea that ruby ​​could be used as a maser, but no one used it. Ruby makes a laser. He finally succeeded, I think it should be in May 1960, when he demonstrated how a laser was generated. After he showed the first laser, everything began to break away from the cage.
In 1962, Lincoln Laboratories of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, led by Robert Rediker, said they made a diode that emits many self-illuminations and can use it to emit infrared i-rays. signal. When they released a report on such diodes at a meeting in July of that year, many of us said that it is possible to turn it into coherent light, such as lasers?
"Connect": Is this different from what Mehman has done?
Helen Yake: As far as Mehman's laser is concerned, it is a kind of flash similar to that used in photography. You can release a strong white light, then the white light is absorbed by the ruby ​​bar, and then the ruby ​​bar raises all the red chrome atoms to a higher state, and then releases them into a laser. That is a process in which the primary process drives the secondary process. All the light you see is a heat source, and the heat causes the atom to vibrate gently, releasing some kind of light. It is better to say that the heater is better than the illuminator.
The laser I am talking about is light that enters from one end and then exits from the Other. In this path, it is itself a light generator, and that is a diode laser.
Wired: How big is the original LED?
He Lun Yake: Very small. Of course, you can make it bigger, and people have already done so. You know, in the field of semiconductor applications, semiconductors will always win, sweeping ordinary electronic products.
"Connect": At the time, the LED looks like today?
He Lunak: The LED you see today is on a low-cost platform, but that's just a form. In fact, LEDs can be produced in a variety of forms, and the variety and geometry can vary.
Wired: What else can we do?
He Lunak: There are still many things that can be done to make it more appropriate. We are still looking for better ways to make crystals, do chemical research, and get everything right.
I made the first alloy at General Electric. Later I made some other semiconductor alloys, and they became even better. That is the alloy you can see now, they can emit red-orange light, then yellow light. Then, others switched to other forms of alloys that allowed them to emit blue light; however, they encountered greater difficulties when converting blue light to green light. Moreover, no one can solve the problem of obtaining yellow light very well.
"Connecting": But after these developments, LED has become the light source for mainstream use.
Helen Yake: On the whole, LEDs are beginning to take over the lighting market, from special lighting to all types of lighting. For now, the entire world is using LEDs of different forms and colors.
"Connect": So, will we see the use of LEDs continue to grow?
He Lunak: You can only think of LEDs as a light source, but you can also use them in the form of lasers for use in surgery and photosensitization, and you can't do the same thing with a light bulb. It's like saying that I have to put a pacemaker made of a vacuum tube in a patient's body that can only be a joke.
You can use LEDs to make a range of things, whether in medicine, instrumentation or automotive. Some car companies have completely achieved that all the lights on the car are LEDs, which makes it unnecessary to replace the headlights, taillights or indicator lights, because the LEDs can be used for a long time.
And this is not the end, in fact, to some extent, LEDs are in infancy. Although LED has already passed the infancy in terms of time, my feeling is that it will go a long way in the future, and in this case it is still in its infancy.
Wired: Are you still working on this job?
He Lunak: No, I have other things to do with my partner. One type of particle flow in a transistor is originally useless, but it has now become a light emitter, a laser signal, so now we have two forms of signals that can be part of a new generation of chips.
Optical information is transmitted better than electronic information. Electronics lose power when moving from one place to another, and optical signals are much better. Optical signals can also be used to make a chip, but it takes 10, 20, 30 or even 40 years of unremitting efforts to do it.
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