Mondo Knows Facts

White LEDs are blue chips coated in phosphor

Part of the blue light is converted to yellow, and the mix looks white A white LED starts with a blue gallium nitride chip, and a layer of yellow phosphor over it absorbs some of that light and re-emits a broad yellow glow. Blue plus yellow is perceived as white, though the spectrum is uneven and colour rendering suffers. The blue LED that made this possible won the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics. It sits in Mondo's everyday life collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.

Where this comes from

National Institute of Standards and Technology

Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.

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Tags: lighting, electronics, colour

White LEDs are blue chips coated in phosphor: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?
Part of the blue light is converted to yellow, and the mix looks white. The figure is taken from National Institute of Standards and Technology, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a everyday life fact?
Yes. It sits on the Everyday Life shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?
The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.