History of blue led and why its worth for nobel prize:

History of blue LED:

• Many considered creating a GaN LED too difficult to produce,Nakamura was fortunate that the founder of Nichia, Nobuo Ogawa (1912–2002) was initially willing to support his GaN project. However the company eventually ordered him to suspend work on GaN, claiming it was consuming too much time and money. Nakamura continued to develop the blue LED on his own and in 1993 succeeded in making the device.
• The blue LED was demonstrated by Shuji Nakamura in 1994 based on Indium gallium nitride(InGaN). Its development built on critical developments in GaN nucleation on sapphire substrates(blue shaded) and the demonstration of p-type doping of GaN, developed by Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano in Nagoya.In 1995.
• Alberto Barbieri at the Cardiff University Laboratory investigated the efficiency and reliability of high-brightness LEDs and demonstrated a "transparent contact" LED using indium tin oxide (ITO) on (AlGaInP/GaAs).
•  The existence of blue LEDs and high-efficiency LEDs quickly led to the development of the first white LED, yellow light with blue light produces light appears white.
• Nakamura has also worked on green LEDs, and is responsible for creating the white LED and blue laser diodes used in Blu-ray Discs and HD DVDs.

Why blue LED worth for nobel prize:

• White LED lamps emit a bright white light, are long-lasting and energy-efficient. They are constantly improved, getting more efficient with higher luminous flux (measured in lumen) per unit electrical input power (measured in watt). The most recent record is just over 300 lm/W, which can be compared to 16 for regular light bulbs and close to 70 for fluorescent lamps. As about one fourth of world electricity consumption is used for lighting purposes, the LEDs contribute to saving the Earth’s resources. Materials consumption is also diminished as LEDs last up to 100,000 hours, compared to 1,000 for incandescent bulbs and 10,000 hours for fluorescent lights.
• The LED lamp holds great promise for increasing the quality of life for over 1.5 billion people around the world who lack access to electricity grids: due to low power requirements it can be powered by cheap local solar power.
• 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.

Butterfly wings grown successfully in lab

• Scientists have successfully grown a wing of the blue morpho butterfly in the laboratory.

• Professor Andrew Parker, of the Natural History Museum in London hopes to find a way of making the microscopic structures in the insect's wing which act like tiny prisms, splitting light into different colours and the brightly iridescent colours seen in the wings of some insects could one day be used in paints and cosmetics, the Independent reported.

• Parker added that conventional pigments work by absorbing some wavelengths of light and scattering others. But the wings of the blue morpho contain transparent structures that refract light in a way that gives it its vivid colouration

Internet is going to boost 100 times than existing.

• Graphene in telecommunications could make the internet a hundred times faster than existing. 

• Researchers from the Universities of Bath and Exeter have shown that a few layers of graphene stacked on top of each other could act as a formidable material for optical switches, delivering speeds up to 100 times faster than current telecommunications technology.

• Ordinarily optical switches respond at rate of a few picoseconds - around a trillionth of a second. Through this study physicists have observed the response rate of an optical switch using 'few layer graphene' to be around one hundred femtoseconds - nearly a hundred times quicker than current materials. 

• Graphene is pure carbon in the form of a very thin, nearly transparent sheet, one atom thick. It is remarkably strong for its very low weight (100 times stronger than steel) and it conducts heat and electricity with great efficiency.  

• "We've seen an ultrafast optical response rate, using 'few-layer graphene', which has exciting applications for the development of high speed optoelectronic components based on graphene," lead researcher Dr Enrico Da Como said.

• I think this technology should research faster .
• The study was published in Physical Review Letters.
   

Scientists Discover How to Produce Oxygen Without Plants

• There's new scientific evidence that shows oxygen can be produced without the help of photosynthesis from green plants.
• Scientists revealed that the breakthrough can bring about a better understanding of how the Earth's early atmospheric oxygen was formed before there were plants, and how oxygen may also exist in the atmosphere of other planets that have no vegetation.

• According to researchers from the University of California, carbon dioxide molecules break in half if they experience specific wavelengths of light radiation. The result is a C molecule and an O2 molecule.
• Scientists previously thought that dioxide molecules separated into a CO and O molecule regardless of what light wavelength they're exposed to since this is considered as a molecular process where least resistance is involved.
• Researchers revealed that to separate CO and O molecules from the carbon dioxide molecule, five electron volts are needed to break them, but for C and O2 to come together, an energy of around 11.4 electron volts is required.
• According to Arthur Suits, a chemist at Wayne State University in Detroit, the molecular behavior of carbon dioxide is very difficult to study when exposed to high energies.
• The results are not consistent, however, as researchers say experiments yielded a C and O2 result of only five percent when carbon dioxide molecules are exposed to intense light radiation.
• Author Cheuk-Yiu Ng from the University of California said that when carbon dioxide molecules are hit with this type of radiation, they can break apart in more than one channel and some five percent were the only CO2 that became C and O2.
• Suits added these findings may provide clues how oxygen formed in the Earth's atmosphere and in other planets and even dying stars and interstellar dust clouds.
• The study was published in the journal, Science.

First rechargeable solar battery

• It’s a solar cell! No… it’s a rechargeable lithium-air battery! No… wait… it’s both: It’s the world’s first all-in-one solar battery!
• Integrating the function of a solar panel that captures light, and a cheap battery that stores energy into one hybrid device, researchers have successfully invented the world’s first solar battery.

• The device will help bring down the costs of renewable energy by 25 percent, the researchers said.The key to the innovation is a mesh solar panel that allows air to enter the battery, and a special process for transferring electrons between the solar panel and the battery electrode.Inside the device, light and oxygen enable different parts of the chemical reactions that charge the battery.
• The invention also solves a longstanding problem in solar energy efficiency, by eliminating the loss of electricity that normally occurs when electrons have to travel between a solar cell and an external battery.
• “With this new design, light is converted to electrons inside the battery, so nearly 100 percent of the electrons are saved,” the researchers said. 

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/191438-this-air-breathing-solar-panel-stores-its-own-electricity-cutting-the-cost-of-solar-power-significantly