Before he chose a particular university, he had to decide to leave industry for academia. But I felt that I had come to a crossroads in my life. There is a spectrum of orientation for research that ranges, let us say, from the purely commercial to the purely academic. I decided that an academic context would now be better for my work. What it took for us to attract the leader of this new semiconductor revolution was our existing premier group.
Quality attracts quality.
One of the key outcomes of Nakamura's research at Santa Barbara will likely be a whole new way of lighting. Nakamura pioneered a method whereby the gases flow in two directions instead of one, thereby improving the material quality. And the blue LED lead to the white LED and the blue laser. The gap that an electron traverses to give off a blue photon is greater than that for any other visible color, so the electron has to have more energy to give off the higher frequency blue photon. The electrons flow along in one direction, and the holes in the other.