The Blue Laser Diode by Shuji Nakamura and Gerhard Fasol,
Springer-Verlag, 拢42.50, ISBN 3 540 61590 3
IN November 1993 Shuji Nakamura surprised the world. An unknown researcher
without a PhD to his name, working at an obscure Japanese company, Nakamura
announced that he had developed a bright blue light-emitting diode.
This was an achievement that had eluded the biggest names in the electronics
industry鈥擱CA, Hewlett-Packard, Matsushita and Sony鈥攆or more than two
decades. Nakamura has since made another breakthrough: a blue laser diode.
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The commercial significance of the devices could be enormous. The blue LED
should enable semiconductors to replace incandescent light bulbs, even in
household lighting. The blue laser is the key to the next generation of
high capacity digital video discs (鈥淚nto the blue鈥�, New 杏吧原创, 29
March, p 28).
Now Nakamura has documented his discoveries. The technical chapters that form
the bulk of The Blue Laser Diode will be lapped up by semiconductor
specialists keen to know more. There is a dearth of information on gallium
nitride, the mysterious compound from which Nakamura fashioned his devices. Most
semiconductor textbooks do not even mention GaN.
But the book also includes fascinating material that answers the question:
why did Nakamura succeed where many, much larger, research groups had
failed?
For this we must be grateful to the book鈥檚 coauthor, Gerhard Fasol, a
Tokyo-based researcher without whom the book would not exist. By telling the
鈥渁mazing story鈥� of how the blue LED was produced, he and Nakamura hope to teach
鈥渟omething new鈥� that will help to trigger other scientific breakthroughs.
鈥淲hat I have managed to achieve,鈥� Nakamura writes, 鈥渟hows that anybody with
relatively little special experience in the field, no big money and no
collaborations with universities or other companies, can achieve considerable
success alone when he tries a new research area without being obsessed with
conventional ideas and knowledge.鈥�
The most important reason for Nakamura鈥檚 success was that he deliberately
chose an area where there was no direct competition from big companies.
Companies attempting to make blue LEDs were working mostly with zinc selenide.
Before 1989, when he began his research on gallium nitride, Nakamura had spent a
frustrating decade producing materials for his company, Nichia Chemical, that
were technically successful but commercially disastrous because of fierce
competition from huge Japanese rivals.
Nakamura would never have succeeded without the support of Nichia鈥檚 chairman
and founder Nobuo Ogawa, now 83 years old. Ogawa was not some remote
administrator, but a down-to-earth industrial chemist who developed the
company鈥檚 initial products.
鈥淚t is important to keep in mind,鈥� Fasol writes, in a chapter that should be
compulsory reading for science policy makers and management gurus, 鈥渢hat
Nichia鈥檚 management structure is extremely simple. In the case of the company鈥檚
gallium nitride programme, it consists of Ogawa and Nakamura, and nobody else.
It could not be more simple: no committees, no management boards, no advisors,
no supervisors, no department heads, group leaders etc, no review panels, no
internationalisation, no coordinators, no national or international consortia,
no coordination鈥攋ust work.鈥�
Ogawa chose to gamble on gallium nitride. He allocated $3.3 million to
Nakamura, equivalent to 1.5 per cent of company鈥檚 sales. As Fasol writes, it is
rare for a large company to spend so much on a single blue-sky project with a
single researcher, when the probability of success is unknown. Large companies,
he notes, such as AT&T, spend between $250 000 and $400 000 a
year per researcher.
Critics chided Ogawa. 鈥淥f course it was a big risk,鈥� he told me when I
interviewed him in 1995, 鈥渂ut then risk is synonymous with research.鈥� Ogawa bet
on Nakamura because he had faith in his researcher鈥檚 ability. 鈥淚 thought that if
I let him get on with it, he鈥檇 probably be able to come up with the goods.鈥�
Simple as that.