The 2014 Nobel Prize for physics has been awarded to a trio of scientists in Japan and the US for the invention of blue light emitting diodes (LEDs).
Professors Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura made the first blue LEDs in the early 1990s.
This enabled a new generation of bright, energy-efficient white lamps, as well as colour LED screens.
The winners will share prize money of eight million kronor (£0.7m).
They were named at a press conference in Sweden, and join a prestigious list of 196 other Physics laureates recognised since 1901.
Staffan Normark, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, announces the physics prize
Prof Nakamura, who was woken up in Japan to receive the news, told the press conference, "It's unbelievable."
Making the announcement, the Nobel jury emphasised the usefulness of the invention, adding that the Nobel Prizes were established to recognise developments that delivered "the greatest benefit to mankind".
"These uses are what would make Alfred Nobel very happy," said Prof Olle Inganas, a member of the prize committee from Linkoping University.
The committee chair, Prof Per Delsing, from Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, emphasised the winners' dedication.
"What's fascinating is that a lot of big companies really tried to do this and they failed," he said. "But these guys persisted and they tried and tried again - and eventually they actually succeeded."
Professors Akasaki, Amano and Nakamura made the first blue LEDs in the early 1990s
Albeit red and green Leds had been around for a long time, blue Leds were a long-standing test for researchers in both the scholarly world and industry.
Without them, the three colors couldn't be blended to deliver the white light we now see in LED-based machine and TV screens. Moreover, the high-vitality blue light could be utilized to energize phosphorus and straightforwardly deliver white light - the premise of the up and coming era of light.
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With 20% of the world's power utilized for lighting, its been ascertained that ideal utilization of LED lighting could lessen this to 4%"
Dr Frances Saunders
President, Institute of Physics
Today, blue Leds are found in individuals' pockets far and wide, inside the lights and screens of cell phones.
White LED lights, in the mean time, convey light to numerous business locales and families. They utilize considerably less vitality than both glowing and fluorescent lights.
That change emerges on the grounds that Leds change over power specifically into photons of light, rather than the inefficient mixture of high temperature and light produced inside conventional, glowing knobs. Those globules use present to hotness a wire fiber until it shines, while the gas release inside fluorescent lights likewise delivers both high temperature and light.
Inside a LED, current is connected to a sandwich of semiconductor materials, which radiate a specific wavelength of light relying upon the synthetic make-up of those materials.
Gallium nitride was the key add-in utilized by the Nobel laureates as a part of their notable blue Leds. Developing enormous enough precious stones of this compound was the hindrance that ceased numerous different scientists - yet Profs Akasaki and Amano, working at Nagoya University in Japan, figured out how to develop them in 1986 on an uniquely planned platform made part of the way from sapphire.
After four years Prof Nakamura made a comparable achievement, while he was working at the compound organization Nichia. Rather than an uncommon substrate, he utilized a shrewd control of temperature to help the development of the immeasurably critical gems.
