OREANDA-NEWS. December 02, 2014. The joint research project between Samsung R&D Institute Japan and the Institute of Physics, the University of Tartu aims to find more efficient materials for white light emitting diodes (LEDs).

The long-term competence on white LEDs developed at the Institute of Physics will be applied together with the leading technology corporation in the world.

The LEDs play more and more important role in the everyday lighting systems from homes to cities. The joint research will be devoted to the search for new efficient materials for white light emitting diodes. “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,” commented Professor Brik.

Vice Rector for Research of the University of Tartu Marco Kirm and Dr Kazushige Mori, Executive Vice President of Samsung R&D Institute Japan signed a bilateral cooperation agreement between the University of Tartu and Samsung R&D Institute Japan on 14 October 2014.

“This cooperation agreement shows how competitive our research groups can be internationally, even if we do not have corresponding industry in Estonia. Frontier research performed by Professor Mikhail G. Brik and his group has such high potential, which is now in the focus of interest of one of the world’s leading high-tech company in the field of lighting industry, such as Samsung. There is an obvious need to look much wider than our own country or the European Union,” pointed out Dr Marco Kirm, Vice Rector for Research of the University of Tartu.

Professor 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 programme on Internationalisation of Higher Education (DoRa). Successful contacts with the Samsung R&D Institute Japan were triggered at the academic conference in March 2014, where academia traditionally meets with industries all over the world. The fruitful discussions between the University of Tartu and Samsung R&D Institute Japan finally resulted in this cooperation agreement, which will lead to a further enhancement of the research ties between Estonia and Japan, between academia and industry, and will contribute to the visibility of the University of Tartu in the world.