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Disposable Lasers Created Using Inkjet Printer (dailymail.co.uk)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the light-reading dept.

An anonymous reader quotes this report from The Daily Mail: Researchers have invented a way to print lasers that's so cheap, easy and efficient they believe the core of the laser could be disposed of after each use. The disposable organic lasers amplify light with carbon-containing materials and they are produced using a simple inkjet printer...

"The low-cost and easiness of laser chip fabrication are the most significant aspects of our results," said Sebastien Sanaur, an associate professor in the Center of Microelectronics in Provence at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Mines de Saint-Etienne in France... One obstacle that has held back organic lasers is the fact that they degrade relatively quickly -- but that hurdle might be less daunting if the lasers are so cheap they could be tossed when they fail. Sanaur's research team produced their ultra-low-cost organic laser using a familiar technology: an inkjet printer... They estimate it could be produced for only a few cents. Like the replaceable blades in a razor, the lasing capsule could be easily swapped out when it deteriorates.

60 comments

  1. Oh great by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Now even *more* garbage in landfills.

    1. Re:Oh great by DivineKnight · · Score: 1

      Orgy-Porgy.

    2. Re:Oh great by Neuronwelder · · Score: 1

      But if it is organic, wouldn't that not be a problem??

    3. Re:Oh great by amRadioHed · · Score: 1

      Likely the replaceable component will be in a plastic cartridge like everything else. Plus, even biodegradable things are a problem in a landfill due to the lack of air for the bacteria.

      --
      We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
    4. Re:Oh great by Neuronwelder · · Score: 1

      If that is so, can't they inject them with air??

  2. Retarded, in a word. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    More cheap and disposable products do not improve anything for anyone. Fuck China.

  3. Disposable? by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why the fuck would anyone create yet another disposable anything? Is there a widespread contagion of viruses caused by unsanitary lasers shared by groups of people?

    We live in a closed system with limited ressources, stop wasting them and turning them into garbage!

    1. Re:Disposable? by kylemonger · · Score: 0

      As long as we have energy and technology, nothing is really garbage, at least not permanently garbage. We know where the landfills are so we can mine them later once we know how to convert their contents into useful items again.

    2. Re:Disposable? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Should we only make VR headsets and virtual goods?

    3. Re:Disposable? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why? I'm free to choose disposable things if I want. This is America, not the Soviet Union.
      --
      roman_mir

    4. Re:Disposable? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Like in Ridley Walker?

      It's still less effort to not put them in the garbage to start with. Entropy and all that.

    5. Re:Disposable? by Al+Al+Cool+J · · Score: 2

      Maybe they can figure out a way of making them from used Keurig K-cups.

    6. Re:Disposable? by swb · · Score: 1

      I'm just trying to figure out a use case for a disposable laser.

      The only one I can come up with is some kind of party favor and even then I'm guessing it would need a power source.

      It usually seems that any value beyond "ooh, laser" almost always requires some amount of non-disposable electronics that make the laser useful.

    7. Re:Disposable? by ColdWetDog · · Score: 1

      Any time you needed a short term bit of coherent light. Activating a product. Cutting a hole in something. Lighting up a sign. Blowing something up (always a favorite).

      Holographic Storage!!!! I win!!!!

      Oh. Wait.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    8. Re:Disposable? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Anything can be disposable at any price if the use has other constraints. I've worked with equipment in the past used for mining and ocean monitoring equipment that had $1k+ lasers that were disposable, because it would have taken a lot more resources to make the rest of the equipment survive longer or be easier to retrieve, etc. A classmate in grad school worked on an experiment that would destroy about $10k with of optics every time it went off. But that was enough years ago that now the experimental setup would be a lot cheaper to not bother with half the optics and just pay for a couple laser diodes to be lost every shot.

      Engineering isn't about making everything last as long as possible at any cost, but about minimizing the resources needed to make something work within necessary constraints. And quite often, you can use less resources by not making every part as strong as possible. Saying nothing should be made disposable runs counter to your plea that we need to stop wasting resources.

    9. Re:Disposable? by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      At some point in time we'll find out that all that coal and oil we use today is nothing but the garbage pits of the dinosaurs.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    10. Re:Disposable? by Heart44 · · Score: 1

      From the paper, the author's conclusions: In this paper, we show that inkjet printing can be successfully applied to external-cavity vertically emitting thin-film organic lasers and can be used to generate a diffraction-limited output beam with an output energy as high as 33.6J with a slope efficiency S of 34%. Laser emission shows to be continuously tunable from 570 to 670nm using an intracavity polymer-based Fabry-Perot etalon, and extension to the whole visible spectrum is straightforward with a proper choice of other dyes and UV or blue pumping. High-optical quality films with several microns' thicknesses are realized, thanks to inkjet printing. Indeed, EMD6415 commercial ink constitutes the optical host matrix and exhibits a refractive index of 1.5 and an absorption coefficient of 0.66cm1 at 550–680nm. Standard laser dyes like Pyrromethene 597 and Rhodamine 640, as used here, are incorporated in solution to the EMD6415 ink. Such large size “printed pixels” of 50mm2 present uniform and flat surfaces, with roughness measured as low as 1.5nm in different locations of a 50m × 50m AFM scan. The optimal inkjet printing conditions include (i) a 20m drop spacing, (ii) to heat the quartz substrates' “capsules” at 40C during printing to finally obtain “pixels” as thick as 20m after 2 printing passes. As the gain capsules fabricated by inkjet printing are simple and do not incorporate any tuning or cavity element, they are simple to make, have a negligible fabrication cost, and can be used as fully disposable items. This work opens the way towards the fabrication of really low-cost tunable visible lasers with an affordable technology that has the potential to be widely disseminated. Such systems could find useful applications in bio and chemical analysis.

    11. Re:Disposable? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      NOT putting them in the garbage (can) IS garbage! But I do think it is African and Indian interests what have hindered the development of recycling plants the Civilization (ToT) way.

    12. Re:Disposable? by rpstrong · · Score: 1

      In Soviet Russia, things dispose of you!

  4. Consumables? by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

    What do you have to grind up to feed into the hopper? Because lasers will never be cheap if you have to buy cartridges.

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  5. Will it scale? by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

    How far will it scale? Watts/area limits?

    Can I make disposable lasers (for my sharks) with a 5 gallon bucket of this goo?

    Help me out, so I don't have to RTFA.

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    1. Re:Will it scale? by nickol · · Score: 1

      Yes, it does. Lasers based on organic dyes are known for decades. I've seen a DIY project in 1970-s magazine. And it was large. Something like, yes, a gallon bucket. What is interesting in this new approach is that it is small.

    2. Re:Will it scale? by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 1
      Have you got disposable sharks?

      Before the sharks dispose of you?

      --
      Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
  6. Why do you hate capitalism? by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 2

    Why the fuck would anyone create yet another disposable anything? Is there a widespread contagion of viruses caused by unsanitary lasers shared by groups of people?

    We live in a closed system with limited ressources, stop wasting them and turning them into garbage!

    Please, won't someone think of the potential for advertizing?

    This could be a revolution in the way we highlight products and services that the consumer might be interested in.

    Why do you hate capitalism?

    1. Re:Why do you hate capitalism? by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 3, Informative

      Why do you hate capitalism?
      Because it is destroying the world and bottom line man kind?

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    2. Re:Why do you hate capitalism? by thinkwaitfast · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Not too long ago, fewer than 10 years ago, people here used to get excited about developments like this and all the new technologies it would enable. Print a monitor or any sort of electronic circuit on a piece of cheap paper for pennies, no more big polluting factories. Download and print a cell phone, print a wall size monitor. It's what all the nerds wanted.

      Now nerds want comic book movies and to complain about the doom and gloom of the future. Well good luck with that. The enlightenment is dead, long live romanticism. I hear there's a new zombie move coming out.

    3. Re:Why do you hate capitalism? by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 3, Informative

      Why do you hate capitalism?

      because it...
      * enables psychopaths to gain power and bleed your for all your worth
      * has corrupted our government and degraded our rights
      * promotes misinformation
      * is destroying our society
      * is killing our next generation with sugar
      * is killing our ecosystem both on land and water
      * is unsustainable

      --
      Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    4. Re:Why do you hate capitalism? by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 2

      Now nerds want comic book movies and to complain about the doom and gloom of the future. Well good luck with that.

      To be fair, wages have stagnated and lots of people are out of a job.

      It makes perfect sense to be worried about the future, and devote time to complaining and looking for solutions.

      (And not to put too fine a point on it, WE are the smart people in the room. If answers are to come, they will come from forward-looking individuals like us.)

    5. Re:Why do you hate capitalism? by thinkwaitfast · · Score: 1

      So he fuck what? Stuff is so cheap now. I've made less than 30k for the last ten years, am working on buying my third house and running out stuff to buy. Really, honest. Opportunity that never existed before is there if you want it.

    6. Re:Why do you hate capitalism? by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      Not too long ago, fewer than 10 years ago, people here used to get excited about developments like this and all the new technologies it would enable. Print a monitor or any sort of electronic circuit on a piece of cheap paper for pennies, no more big polluting factories. Download and print a cell phone, print a wall size monitor. It's what all the nerds wanted.

      The people who used to get excited about that are now 10 years older and their idea of excitement is coming up with ways to keep teenagers off their lawns. Somewhere in that whole proper progression from enthusiasm to bitterness, I screwed up and remained enthusiastic, while it appeas that most at slasdot have claimed any bitterness I might have gained.

      But there are still people like me, and younger ones who enjoy new stuff.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    7. Re:Why do you hate capitalism? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As opposed to?

      Pure socialism (not the mixed socialism / capitalism model that most of the Western world is using that you hate so much)?
      Communism? Good luck with that.
      Feudalism? Come and see the violence inherent in the system!
      Trumpism? Whatever the hell that turns out to be.

    8. Re:Why do you hate capitalism? by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 1
      Trumpism

      I believe it is like triumphalism, but without the triumph!

      --
      Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
    9. Re:Why do you hate capitalism? by BlackPignouf · · Score: 1

      To be fair, I think those points are much more valid when talking about the over-financialization of capitalism.

    10. Re:Why do you hate capitalism? by cosmo154 · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Did you pay Cash for your houses, and vehicles?

      No?

      Then you don't own them, so if that's the case, your point is a bit thin, at best.

    11. Re:Why do you hate capitalism? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      because it...
      [...]
      * is unsustainable

      makes human life and culture unsustainable

      There, fixed that for you. The fact that capitalism itself is unsustainable is a feature, not a bug.
      When a bad thing is unsustainable it is a little less bad than if it was sustainable.
      The bug is that it destroys more than itself.
      We don't want capitalism to sustain itself, the problem is it makes everything else unsustainable.

    12. Re:Why do you hate capitalism? by freeze128 · · Score: 1

      ...for the same reason that Tom Cruise hates that cereal box.

    13. Re: Why do you hate capitalism? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Capitalism + technology is the best chance the world has, period (unless you're a fan of the Fallout way of life). Scary that people are starting to use their capitalism invented technology to berate the system.

    14. Re:Why do you hate capitalism? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Who the fuck are you, Pol Pot?

    15. Re:Why do you hate capitalism? by Coren22 · · Score: 1

      With interest rates as low as they are, you would be a moron to buy a house with cash. You can invest the money instead and make a higher return.

      --
      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
  7. Now we need sharks by Trachman · · Score: 1

    Imagine the possibilities, if we could only get a way to print disposable miniature sharks.

    1. Re:Now we need sharks by R3d+M3rcury · · Score: 1

      Okay, okay. So I 3D print a shark and then use my inkjet to print a disposable laser...

    2. Re:Now we need sharks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That suggests to me we need a "Surreal" moderating option!

  8. Does that make it a ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... laser printer?

    1. Re:Does that make it a ... by SeaFox · · Score: 1

      Mod this up. AC wins the pun round this time.

  9. Scientific Article with actual info by esonik · · Score: 3, Informative

    You'd think professional journalists would properly cite even link to the original publication.

    Oussama Mhibik, Sebastien Chenais, Sebastien Forget, Christophe Defranoux and Sebastien Sanaur: Inkjet-printed vertically emitting solid-state organic lasers, J. Appl. Phys. 119, 173101 (2016).

    http://scitation.aip.org/conte...

    1. Re:Scientific Article with actual info by ColdWetDog · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This is the Daily Mail. I don't think this quite gets to the 'professional journalism' level.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  10. Is it really cheaper? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    With the price of printer ink I wouldn't be surprised if this cost more than a regular laser manufactured in China.

  11. Obligitory by cosmo154 · · Score: 1

    WARNING

    Do Not point LASER at remaining eye.

  12. Re:Obligitory/Fixed by cosmo154 · · Score: 1

    Yeah, it's never good to post with only two hours sleep...

    WARNING

    Do Not point disposable LASER at remaining eye.

  13. What now? by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    Cheap or done by inkjet printers? Make up your mind!

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  14. Cheap, easy, simple inkjet? by mccalli · · Score: 1

    None of these words go together.

  15. Just don't by fyngyrz · · Score: 2

    Do Not Look Into 3D Printer With Remaining Eye

    --
    I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
  16. Fin. by fyngyrz · · Score: 1

    Even better. I have jumpable sharks.

    --
    I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
  17. What problem does this solve? by ilsaloving · · Score: 1

    I guess I'm missing something cause for the life of me, I can't figure out what problem this is supposed to be solving. Apart from maybe healthcare (sterile laser "heads" for laser-based surgeries, etc), I don't see why someone would need single use disposable lasers.

    1. Re:What problem does this solve? by The_Dougster · · Score: 1

      I was imagining lighted blinking beer posters festooning the walls of every bar.

      --
      Clickety Click ...
    2. Re:What problem does this solve? by Blaskowicz · · Score: 1

      Sometimes a box of matches is cheaper than a cigarette lighter, and more reliable too.

  18. Isn't it just a down-converter? by dsmatthews9379 · · Score: 1

    It needs a hight frequency coherent light source to cause it to lase at a lower frequency?

  19. Is this still news for nerds? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Or Greenpeace? Don't like the news, get off the thread. Your blocking up the conversation.

  20. "Like the replaceable blades in a razor"? by Pezbian · · Score: 1

    Yeah, with the same business model that made inkjet printers such a phenomenal advantage.

    --
    In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
  21. What are complaining about? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You must not be Republicans, we LOVE garbage, trash, detritus, just so long as it has not further possible use for the next hundred thousand years! Isn't that what capitalism is all about?