Blue Laser Development

Shiju Nakamura is credited with inventing the blue diode laser and blue, green, and white LEDs. Nakamura was working at Nichia Chemical Industries in Japan when he developed the blue laser in 1995. It’s a technology many large corporations had been trying to develop for several years.

Nakamura had worked with LEDs and lasers for several years before tackling blue lasers in the late 1980s. Because most research at the time focused on using zinc selenide as the laser material, Nakamura decided to work with gallium nitride. He spent two years perfecting a technique for growing high-quality gallium nitride crystals, something other researchers had been unable to achieve.
Finally, Nakamura had the materials necessary to create blue LEDs, which he did in 1993. He followed with green LEDs and a blue laser diode in the next few years. He says the biggest commercial use for blue lasers should be DVD players.

Putting Blue Lasers to Work

Blue lasers could appear in a variety of business applications, including high-density DVDs, laser printers, and lighting situations.

HD DVDs:

HD (high-definition) DVDs using blue laser light could lead to five or six times the storage capacity possible using red laser light on a DVD. Blue laser light could create HD CDs, too.

Because blue lasers can increase the capacity of optical discs by five-fold or more, they give manufacturers a few options for their digital files. Manufacturers could choose to burn additional data onto the disc while keeping the same digital quality, potentially making CDs containing 50 to 75 songs. Manufacturers also could choose to use blue laser to increase the quality level of the video or audio recording. Keep in mind that nearly all DVDs using the MPEG-2 standard automatically contain some compression of the video file, which allows the file to fit on the disc. With an HD DVD, manufacturers could choose to use no compression on the video file, which should improve file quality.

Light bulbs:

With green and red lasers already available, development of a blue laser would be the final piece of the laser puzzle among primary colors. By using all three colors of lasers, a researcher could create a device that would mix the laser light and create white light, which, at some point, could replace the common light bulb. If you combine red, green, and blue laser light, you can produce light with greater brilliance and greater efficiency than currently is available with fluorescent lights.

Creating LEDs in this manner can be of particular help in areas where light bulbs are expensive and difficult to replace. An LED can burn for several times as long as a light bulb for about one-fourth the operating cost because most of the LED’s energy is involved in creating light, rather than creating heat energy. Traditional light bulbs create a lot of heat along with the light.

LEDs already are used in many traffic lights, where traditional bulbs usually last less than one year, can be tough to see in sunlight, and fail suddenly. LEDs in a traffic light should last at least five years, remain highly visible in sunlight, and gradually fade in intensity rather than failing suddenly.


Medicine:

Scientists already are experimenting with blue lasers in discovering certain types of cancer. Using an endoscope, researchers have had some success finding tumors using a blue laser light inside the patient’s stomach and intestinal tract.

Printing:

Laser printers using blue laser light would be smaller and more precise than today’s laser printers, which use red laser light. Because of blue laser light’s smaller wavelength, the laser mechanism inside a printer that uses blue laser light could be smaller, leading to smaller printers. Print resolution using blue lasers would be at least double that of today’s top laser printers, too; some researchers estimate resolution as sharp as 2,400dpi in a blue laser printer. Blue laser could play a role in full-color scanners and fax machines, too.

Security:

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, fears have increased over additional attacks using biological or chemical weapons. However, blue laser light causes some chemical and biological agents to give off light, even though those agents are invisible to the naked eye, which might let security screening personnel spot a biological agent during a routine search or as the agent comes through customs.