The Gap That Colours the Light

Technology · Published

The Gap That Colours the Light · 1:51 · Intellect Plus

In short: How a semiconductor's band gap, set by its alloy recipe, decides an LED's colour, and how blue LEDs, phosphors and colour mixing make white light.

A 1:51 short film in the series “How Things Work”, narrated by intellect_voice_01.

Sources used in this film: MIT OpenCourseWare (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), course 6.007 Electromagnetic Energy: From Motors to Lasers, Spring 2011, Lecture 46 slides, “6.007 Lecture 46: Light emitting diodes (LEDs)”; University of Wisconsin–Madison MRSEC Education Group, “LED (Light Emitting Diodes)”; U.S. Department of Energy (Solid-State Lighting program), article dated July 24, 2018, “University of California at Santa Barbara is Determining the Origins of Efficiency Loss in Gallium Nitride-Based LEDs Used in Lighting”; MIT OpenCourseWare (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), course 3.024 Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Properties of Materials, Spring 2013, lecture notes 19-20, “Lecture 19-20”; University of Rhode Island, Department of Electrical, Computer and Biomedical Engineering (student course report, ELE 432, Spring 2008), “Microsoft Word - ELE432_Report_LED.doc”; IOP Publishing, Reports on Progress in Physics (2017 review by Theodore D Moustakas and Roberto Paiella, Boston University), “RepProgPhys_Moustakas_2017.pdf”; Springer (chapter in 'Optics in Our Time', open access; authors Dandan Zhu and Colin J. Humphreys), “Solid-State Lighting Based on Light Emitting Diode Technology”; National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Taking Measure blog; post by Kris Bertness, January 12, 2022, “My First Semiconductor Standards Were a Bust … or Were They?”; National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), U.S. Department of Commerce (Special Publication 260-163, April 2006), “Standard Reference Materials 2840 to 2482 : Composition standards for AlGaAs epitaxial layers”; Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (Class for Physics), via the Nobel Foundation (nobelprize.org), Scientific Background on the Nobel Prize in Physics 2014, dated 7 October 2014, “advanced-physicsprize2014.pdf”; U.S. Department of Energy, Building Technologies Office (BTO) Lighting R&D Program, “2019 Solid-State Lighting R&D Opportunities”; U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Building Technologies Office (Solid-State Lighting Program), “Solid-State Lighting R&D Plan June 2016”; U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (Solid-State Lighting program); project page dated May 31, 2022, “Solutions to Droop and the Green Gap by Novel Carrier Injection”; Water Research X (Elsevier), via PubMed Central, U.S. National Library of Medicine; authors from Dalhousie University, University of Colorado Boulder, Southern Nevada Water Authority and Black & Veat…, “A critical review of ultra-violet light emitting diodes as a one water disinfection technology”.

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