Feb 20 2010
To get green, manufacturers have had to resort to optical trickery, such as frequency doubling, which entails a lot of extra equipment and decreased energy efficiency. Finally, after a worldwide technological race, researchers have found ways to fashion the compound semiconductor gallium nitride (and its close chemical cousins) into lasers that emit at just the point in the green spectrum that manufacturers desire.
So, we're in the green, but we're not yet in the money. To make the new laser commercially successful, much more work is needed to improve manufacturing yields and other important metrics. But the hardest part of the quest is now over, and when the long-sought green lasers finally hit the market, they will have important repercussions for the television, computer, and handheld industry. All these devices will show off better, livelier colors, using more compact, energy-efficient light sources.