The student Ming Ma from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has developed a new method to manufacture LEDs that are brighter, more energy efficient, and have superior technical properties than those on the market today.

His patent-pending invention holds the promise of hastening the global adoption of LEDs and reducing the overall cost and environmental impact of illuminating our homes and businesses.

Ma's solution to this problem was to create an LED with well-structured features on the surface to minimize the amount of light that gets reflected back into the device, and thus boost the amount of light emitted. He invented a process for creating LEDs with many tiny star-shaped pillars on the surface. Each pillar is made up of five nanolayers specifically engineered to help "carry" the light out of the LED material and into the surrounding air.

Ma's patent-pending technology, called GRIN (graded-refractive-index) LEDs, has demonstrated a light-extraction efficiency of 70%, meaning 70% of light escaped and only 30% was left trapped inside the device—a huge improvement over the 25% light-extraction efficiency of most of today's unprocessed LEDs. In addition, GRIN LEDs also have controllable emission patterns, and enable a more uniform illumination than today's LEDs.

Overall, Ma's innovation could lead to entirely new methods for manufacturing LEDs with increased light output, greater efficiency, and more controllable properties than both surface-roughened LEDs and the LEDs currently available in the marketplace.

For this innovation, Ma, a doctoral student in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, has been named the winner of the prestigious 2013 $30,000 Lemelson-Rensselaer Student Prize. He is among the three 2013 $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Collegiate Student Prize winners announced today.

Ma is the seventh recipient of the Lemelson-Rensselaer Student Prize. First given in 2007, the prize is awarded annually to a Rensselaer senior or graduate student who has created or improved a product or process, applied a technology in a new way, redesigned a system, or demonstrated remarkable inventiveness in other ways.