Gallium nitride is a binary III/V direct bandgap semiconductor commonly used in blue light-emitting diodes since the 1990s. The compound is a very hard material that has a Wurtzite crystal structure. Its wide band gap of 3.4 eV affords it special properties for applications in optoelectronic, high-power and high-frequency devices. For example, GaN is the substrate which makes violet (405 nm) laser diodes possible, without requiring nonlinear optical frequency-doubling.
A blue laser emits electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength between 400 and 500 nanometers, which the human eye sees in the visible spectrum as blue or violet.
Sir Colin John Humphreys, is a British physicist and Christian apologist. He is the Professor of Materials Science at Queen Mary University of London.
Dame Molly Morag Stevens, is Professor of Biomedical Materials and regenerative medicine and Research Director for Biomedical Materials Sciences in the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at Imperial College London.
George Andrew Davidson Briggs is a British scientist. He is Professor of Nanomaterials in the Department of Materials at the University of Oxford. He is best known for his early work in acoustic microscopy and his current work in materials for quantum technologies.
Hiroshi Amano is a Japanese physicist, engineer and inventor specializing in the field of semiconductor technology. For his work he was awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics together with Isamu Akasaki and Shuji Nakamura for "the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources".
Paul O'Brien was professor of Inorganic Materials at the University of Manchester. where he served as head of the School of Chemistry from 2004 to 2009 and head of the School of Materials from 2011 to 2015. He died on 16 October 2018 at the age of 64.
Serena Michelle Best, is a British academic, and the Professor of Materials Science at the University of Cambridge.
Steven P. DenBaars is an American material scientist, electrical engineer, and academic. He is a professor of Materials and Electrical and Computer Engineering, and the executive director of the Solid State Lighting and Energy Electronics Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is also a Fellow of National Academy of Inventors (NAI), and was selected as a Member of National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in 2012 for contributions to gallium nitride-based materials and devices for solid state lighting and displays.
Thomas Benjamin Britton is a materials scientist and engineer based at The University of British Columbia. He is a specialist in micromechanics, electron microscopy and crystal plasticity. In 2014 he was awarded the Silver Medal of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3), a society of which he then became a Fellow in 2016.
Ruth Cameron FInstP FIOM3 FREng is a British materials scientist and professor at the University of Cambridge. She is co-director of the Cambridge Centre for Medical Materials, where she studies materials that interact therapeutically with the body. Since October 2020 she has been joint head of the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy at Cambridge.
Rachel Clare Thomson is a professor of Materials Science and Engineering, and Pro Vice Chancellor of Teaching at Loughborough University. She is known for her expertise in measuring and predicting the behaviour of materials for high temperature power generation, as well as the development of higher education and research programmes.
Catherine Mary Fiona Rae is a Professor of Superalloys in the Department of Materials at the University of Cambridge. Rae is the Director of the Rolls-Royce UTC in Cambridge. She is known for her expertise in electron microscopy and the behaviour of materials in aerospace applications.
Rachel Claire EvansFLSW is a Welsh chemist based at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. She works on photoactive polymer-hybrid materials for solar devices, including organic photovoltaics and stimuli-responsive membranes.
Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) produce light by the recombination of electrons and electron holes in a semiconductor, a process called "electroluminescence". The wavelength of the light produced depends on the energy band gap of the semiconductors used. Since these materials have a high index of refraction, design features of the devices such as special optical coatings and die shape are required to efficiently emit light. A LED is a long-lived light source, but certain mechanisms can cause slow loss of efficiency of the device or sudden failure. The wavelength of the light emitted is a function of the band gap of the semiconductor material used; materials such as gallium arsenide, and others, with various trace doping elements, are used to produce different colors of light. Another type of LED uses a quantum dot which can have its properties and wavelength adjusted by its size. Light-emitting diodes are widely used in indicator and display functions, and white LEDs are displacing other technologies for general illumination purposes.
Allan Matthews (1952) is professor of surface engineering and tribology at the University of Manchester and director of the Digitalised Surfaces Manufacturing Network.
Martin D. Dawson FInstP FOSA FIEEE FRSE FRS is a British professor of photonics who is research director of the Institute of Photonics at the University of Strathclyde and is Head of Fraunhofer Centre for Applied Photonics. He has made pioneering contributions in several applied photonics areas.
Huili Grace Xing is the William L. Quackenbush Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Materials Science and Engineering in the Cornell University College of Engineering. In 2019, Xing was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) "for pioneering contributions in polar wide-bandgap semiconductors, 2D crystal semiconductors and layered crystals," as well as Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2021.
James Busfield is a Queen Mary University of London professor, and head of the United Kingdom's largest research group in the area of Soft Matter.
Sohini Kar-Narayan is a British–Indian materials scientist who is a professor at the University of Cambridge. Her research considers polymer based materials for energy harvesting. She was awarded the 2023 Royal Society of Chemistry Peter Day Prize.
