The winner of this year's Discover magazine award for new energy technologies, Schubert's discovery may well revolutionalize lighting on the street and in our homes. It has the potential to save towns and cities millions of dollars in street lighting and traffic signals alone because LEDs use only a fraction of the electricity needed by conventional light bulbs. And, since LEDs almost never burn out, they also hold the promise of some day eliminating the need ever to change a lightbulb!

Developed by Schubert and engineering graduate students Xiaoyun (Jane) Guo and John Graff, the PRS-LED uses a relatively new chemical compound called gallium indium nitride (GaInN). When excited by an electrical current, GaInN produces light in the blue-green range with almost no wasted energy. Schubert and his colleagues discovered that by redirecting the blue-green light through a layer of aluminum gallium indium phosphide (AlGaInP), which by itself yields light in the red-yellow range, they could create what the eye experiences as ambient white light.

Schubert hopes to have a PRS-LED-based light source on the market within five years. He believes that its widespread use has the potential to cut national energy consumption by as much as 10 percent.