Nakamura graduated from the
University of Tokushima in 1977 with a
B.Eng. in Electronic Engineering, and obtained an
M.Eng. in the same subject in 1979, after which he joined the
Nichia Corporation, also based in
Tokushima. It was while working for Nichia that Nakamura invented the method for producing the first commercial high brightness
gallium nitride (GaN) LED whose brilliant
blue light, when partially converted to yellow by a phosphor coating, is the key to white LED lighting, which went into production in 1993. Previously, J. I. Pankove and co-workers at
RCA put in considerable effort but did not make a marketable GaN LED in the 1960s. The principal problem was the difficulty of making strongly
p-type GaN. Nakamura drew on the work of another Japanese group led by Professor
Isamu Akasaki, who published their method to make strongly p-type GaN by electron-beam irradiation of magnesium-doped GaN; however, this method was not suitable for mass production. Nakamura developed a thermal annealing method much more suitable for mass production. In addition, he and his co-workers worked out the physics and pointed out the culprit was hydrogen, which passivated acceptors in GaN. At the time, many considered creating a GaN LED too difficult to produce; therefore, Nakamura was fortunate that the founder of Nichia, (1912–2002), was willing to support and fund his GaN project. Nakamura left Nichia Corporation in 1999 to join the faculty at the
University of California, Santa Barbara at the personal invitation of the university's chancellor,
Henry T. Yang. Yang flew three times from California to Japan to recruit Nakamura, with promises to build new research facilities and having a Japanese-speaking research staff team already assembled for him. In 2001, Nakamura sued his former employer Nichia over his bonus for the discovery as a part of a series of lawsuits between Nichia and Nakamura with Nichia's US competitor
Cree Inc.; they agreed in 2000 to jointly sue Nichia at the expense of Cree and Nakamura received stock options from Cree. Nakamura claimed that he received only (≈) for his discovery of "404 patent," though Nichia's president Eiji Ogawa's side of the story was that he was shocked beyond belief that the court would award Nakamura ¥20 billion, and downplaying the significance of the "404 patent," opined that the company had adequately compensated him for the innovation through promotions and bonuses amounting to ¥62 million over 11 years and annual salary which was raised to ¥20 million by the time Nakamura quit Nichia. Nakamura sued for ¥2 billion (
blue laser diodes used in Blu-ray Discs and HD DVDs. Nakamura is a professor of Materials at the UCSB. In 2008, Nakamura, along with fellow UCSB professors Dr. Steven P. DenBaars and Dr. James Speck, founded Soraa, a developer of solid-state lighting technology built on pure gallium nitride substrates. Nakamura holds 208 US utility patents as of 5 May 2020. In November 2022, Nakamura co-founded a commercial fusion company, Blue Laser Fusion, with Hiroaki Ohta, a former president of Tokyo-based drone maker ACSL. In July 2023, Blue Laser Fusion raised $25 million from venture capital firm JAFCO Group and the Mirai Creation Fund, which is backed by Toyota Motor and other investors and managed by the SPARX Group. == Personal life ==