Toyota supplier celebrates Nobel Prize winners

From the Nobel Prize in Physics announcement: "The invention of the 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."

 

TOKYO -- A Toyota-affiliated supplier is applauding two of its researchers as winners of this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics.

Toyoda Gosei Co. may be best known for its steering wheels, airbags, interior components and sealing systems.

But the Japanese company also makes blue light emitting diodes. In fact, it was first to develop the technology in 1991 and pioneer their commercialization four years later, with the help of two winners of this year’s Nobel Prize in physics.

The award, announced this week, went to Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura. Akasaki and Amano, both professors at Nagoya University and not direct employees of Gosei, began collaborating with Gosei in 1986 to develop their blue LEDs.

Nakamura worked separately on the technology in the U.S.

The work won the Nobel because blue LEDs were the missing link in creating white-light LEDs that could be substituted for more energy-inefficient incandescent and fluorescent bulbs.

“Toyoda Gosei takes great pride in their achievement,” President Tadashi Arashima said in a statement.

While red and green LEDs had been around for years, scientists struggled to develop a blue light that could combine with those colors to generate white light and full-spectrum color displays.

The result was a technology that today is applied to everything from desk lights and smart phones to vehicle headlamps.

“Since 1986, we turned again and again to Professor Akasaki for guidance, and in 1991, Toyoda Gosei successfully developed the world’s first gallium nitride-based blue light emitting diodes,” Arashima said. “His valuable guidance enabled us to commercialize the blue LEDs in 1995.”

Toyota Motor Corp. holds a 43 percent stake in Gosei and accounts for 65 percent of its global sales. Indeed, Gosei was founded in 1949 as a spinoff of Toyota Motor’s rubber research division. It is based outside Nagoya.

Interior and exterior parts are Gosei’s bread and butter, accounting for 31 percent of the company’s 689.4 billion yen ($6.71 billion) in sales in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2014. Safety systems are next, accounting for 29 percent.

LEDs, by contrast, chip in about 8 percent of total sales.

The company’s blue LEDs often are used as backlights for the liquid-crystal displays used in tablet computers and laptops and as light sources in LED lamps and industrial ceiling lamps.

 Source: Toyota supplier celebrates Nobel Prize winners