Light-emitting diode light-emitting diode (U.S. Patent US3293513), the first practical LED. Immediately after filing the patent, Texas Instruments (TI) began a project to manufacture infrared diodes. In October 1962, TI announced the first commercial LED product (the SNX-100), which employed a pure GaAs crystal to emit a 890 nm light output. In October 1963, TI announced the first commercial hemispherical LED, the SNX-110. The first visible-spectrum (red) LED was developed in 1962 by Nick Holonyak, Jr. while working at General Electric. Holonyak first reported his LED in the journal "Applied Physics Letters" on December 1, 1962. M. George Craford, a former graduate
Superluminescent diode Superluminescent diode A superluminescent diode (SLED or SLD) is an edge-emitting semiconductor light source based on superluminescence. It combines the high power and brightness of laser diodes with the low coherence of conventional light-emitting diodes. Its emission band is 5–100 nm wide. In 1986 Dr. Gerard A. Alphonse at RCA Laboratories (now SRI International), invented the superluminescent diode. This light source was developed as a key component in the next generations of fibre optic gyroscopes, low coherence tomography for medical imaging, and external cavity tunable lasers with applications to fiber-optic communications. In 1989 the technology was transferred to GE-RCA in