Researchers Demonstrate the World's First White Lasers

An anonymous reader writes: Scientists and engineers at Arizona State University, in Tempe, have created the first lasers that can shine light over the full spectrum of visible colors. The device's inventors suggest the laser could find use in video displays, solid-state lighting, and a laser-based version of Wi-Fi. Although previous research has created red, blue, green and other lasers, each of these lasers usually only emitted one color of light. Creating a monolithic structure capable of emitting red, green, and blue all at once has proven difficult because it requires combining very different semiconductors. Growing such mismatched crystals right next to each other often results in fatal defects throughout each of these materials. But now scientists say they've overcome that problem. The heart of the new device is a sheet only nanometers thick made of a semiconducting alloy of zinc, cadmium, sulfur, and selenium. The sheet is divided into different segments. When excited with a pulse of light, the segments rich in cadmium and selenium gave off red light; those rich in cadmium and sulfur emitted green light; and those rich in zinc and sulfur glowed blue.

Comments

'White' light

[Kaenneth]

Real full spectrum 'white' light, or just equalized peaks in the spectrum for RGB?

This would look really cool

[Michael Woodhams]

If you've ever played with a normal monochrome laser in a dark room, you'll have seen how laser illumination makes things look speckly. Illuminating with this "white" laser will make superimposed speckly in three colours, with the locations of the speckles not coinciding, so it would be iridescent speckly.