The Blue Laser Diode. The Complete Story

Abstract

The story of Shuji Nakamura and the blue laser diode is remarkable. It is clear from this book that he enjoys this fact and wishes his readers to become familiar with his success. Nakamura was a little known researcher at a small but successful Japanese company, Nichia Chemical, on Shikoku, one of Japan's four main islands. One of their successful lines was phosphors for fluorescent lights. In 1989, Nakamura was given a few million dollars by the company's Chairman Nobuo Ogawa. Nakamura chose to research into blue light emitters using gallium nitride, a material that had been studied by Pankove at RCA some 20 years earlier and largely written off by the conventional semiconductor industry. In spite of many factors against progress, this second edition ofThe Blue Laser Diode testifies to the success of this gamble.