The Solid State Lighting and Energy Center (SSLEC) is focused on new semiconductor based technologies for energy efficient lighting and displays, power electronics, and solar energy conversion. The objective of the SSLEC is to provide a forum for its members - key industry partners and the faculty and student researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara - to work in collaboration and across scientific disciplines to address the most challenging problems in these important and timely areas of research.

Electrical power is used inefficiently in cell phones, computers, appliances, automobiles, industrial equipment, and power distribution systems account for a tremendous waste of energy. New transistors based on gallium nitride (GaN) and related alloys offer a route to cut this waste significantly, providing energy savings compared to those expected from solid state lighting. Researchers in the SSLEC pioneered GaN based power transistors and continue to lead the world with new discoveries and inventions.

Through basic and applied research intimately tied to industrial goals, the members of the SSLEC will maintain their leadership in increasingly energy sensitive markets. The center boasts over 50 patents since 2007.

(Top photo) Professor Shuji Nakamura is the recipient of the 2006 Millennium Technology Prize for his invention of the revolutionary new energy-saving light sources. Professor Nakamura astonished the scientific community with the first successful blue light-emitting diode (LED). The blue LED was the last step in the creation of the brilliant white LED, and ultra-efficient successor to Thomas Edison's incandescent light bulb of 1879.