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17 Jun 2002
The Japanese government has awarded Shuji Nakamura a USD 16 million grant to develop gallium nitride.
Blue laser pioneer Shuji Nakamura has won a USD 16 million dollars grant from the Japanese government. Nakamura, who is based at the University of California in Santa Barbara, will use the cash to advance the understanding of the properties of gallium-nitride (GaN) crystals and their alloys over the next five years.
Nakamura becomes only the second Japanese US citizen to receive the prestigious ERATO grant. Standing for Exploratory Research for Advanced Technology, the grant is awarded by the Japan Science and Technology corporation to further basic science and technology research.
On receiving the award Nakamura said: "The ERATO award is more like a gift than a research grant. The specifics of how I use this grant are up to me, I can determine everything myself."
Nakamura will use the ERATO support to explore the nature of inhomogeneity in nitride crystals. He also hopes to figure out how to make a bulk crystal or ingot of GaN. At the moment, GaN is only available in thin-films and the bulk crystal form is seen as the key to widespread commercial use of GaN in devices such as lasers and transistors.
A high-pressure, high-temperature reactor is now being developed to fabricate the materials to be used in these devices. The aim is to grow nearly perfect bulk GaN crystals, as well as to deposit GaN on heterogeneous substrates (sapphire, silicon carbide and silicon) by MOCVD and MBE with very few or no dislocations.
In February this year, nine consumer electronics companys introduced a new DVD-storage format based on Nakamura's blue-laser technology. By using a 405 nm semiconductor laser, the new recording format will enable six times more data to be stored on discs.
Author
Jacqueline Hewett is news reporter on Optics.org and Opto & Laser Europe magazine.
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