Violet Laser Diodes?
Altavista WWW search for: ‘blue laser diode’ Application Note: Driving Blue Laser Diodes Blue lasers are a very hot topic right now – but they aren’t quite yet ready for commercialization. There is huge interest in developing blue lasers for two reasons: • To complete the Red-Green-Blue combination needed to provide realistic color displays • Blue diode lasers have very short wavelengths, which means that they can be used to pack data more densely than red lasers, in storage media such as CDs. At the moment, a fierce battle is raging between the proponents of II-VI and III-V compound material systems. (II-VI compounds have one element from the IIA or IIB columns and one element from the VIA or VIB columns of the periodic table, and similarly III-V compounds have one element from the IIIA or IIIB columns and one element from the VA or VB columns of the periodic table.) Research originally started out in the II-VI compounds. Some of these compounds are shown in the figure below: The firs
