University of Tartu and Samsung developing new materials for LED lighting
The joint research project between the Samsung R&D Institute in Japan and the Institute of Physics at the University of Tartu aims to find more efficient materials for white light emitting diodes (LEDs).
“This is one of the hot topics of modern materials science, which can be emphasized by the fact that this year the Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to a group of Japanese-American scientists for a discovery of blue light-emitting diodes. This invention has changed the vision of lighting industry and plays a significant role in limiting hunger for energy used by the world’s population,” said University of Tartu professor Mikhail G. Brik.
Marco Kirm, a vice rector for research of the University of Tartu, and Kazushige Mori, the executive vice president of the Samsung R&D Institute, signed a bilateral cooperation on October 14.
“This cooperation agreement shows how competitive our research groups can be internationally, even if we do not have corresponding industry in Estonia," Kirm said.
Brik has been working on theoretical studies of the materials with a potential for the lighting industry for more than a decade, the last four years as a professor at the University of Tartu, financed through an Estonian program on Internationalization of Higher Education (DoRa).
Contact with Samsung was triggered at the academic conference in March, where academia traditionally meets with industries all over the world.