After four decades of applied use in various facets of industry, medicine and electronics, laser technology is turning another corner in its development. Research laboratories at corporations like Xerox, Sony, Hewlett-Packard and others, are currently exploring the advantages of lasers that utilize blue light. These researchers are finding that the properties of the blue light laser allow improvements on laser equipment that already exists and are opening avenues for new applications as well.

The term "laser" is an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Laser technology works by pumping current into a medium that can either be a solid, such as a crystal, a liquid or a gas. As the atoms in the medium are excited to a higher energy level they emit tiny particles of light (photons) in an intense beam of coherent visible or, in some cases, infrared light. The wavelength of the resulting beam, the distance between the peak of one wave and the next, serves as a measure of its size and intensity. The wavelength of the laser generally depends on the color of light the laser amplifies.

Blue light lasers are exceptional because their wavelength is smaller than the other types currently available. Consequently, the beam of the blue laser can fit into tighter spaces and perform operations on a smaller scale. This makes the blue laser an opportune tool for a host of applications. Even applications that other colored lasers currently perform to a certain degree, can be performed to an even higher degree of precision and expertise by the blue light laser. An example of this type of application would include the high-density storage of information on compact discs. Blue lasers can read binary code at such a microscopic level as to allow manufacturers to house four times as much information as is currently possible.

In the medical industry, tools equipped with lasers have taken the place of the scalpel in many surgical procedures. In other procedures laser equipment is used to unclog arteries and pulverize gallstones. Eye doctors use lasers to repair damage in the retina and dentists use them to drill teeth. The advent of the blue laser will allow manufacturers of medical equipment to design tools that work better than those currently in use. In addition to facilitating tasks that lasers already handle, researchers are currently testing the use of the blue laser to locate cancer. This is because the light the blue laser emits results in the fluorescing of cancerous cells, allowing the laser to differentiate between them and healthy cells.

In the industrial world, the laser is already a commonplace tool for heavy cutting and welding. The development of the blue laser would allow these applications, and others, to provide an even greater degree of precision. In scientific research, lasers are used to image microscopic chemical and biological processes as well as make measurements on an infinitesimal scale. Enhancing this equipment with blue lasers would give these processes a degree of clarity of which scientists had only dreamed.

As far as when blue laser equipment will actually be available, industry experts predict it is only a matter of years and they generally forecast its future market as a lucrative one. Of course, like most developing technologies, blue light lasers have some wrinkles that still need to be ironed out. Chief of these is the decaying speed of its crystal medium, gallium nitride. Infrared lasers typically hold up for at least 10,000 hours while, due to its failing crystal, blue light lasers last for only several hundred hours, meaning that equipment parts would need to be replaced frequently at a considerable cost. Research and development laboratories around the world are trying to analyze why the crystal has such a short life. According to Noble Johnson, a researcher at Xerox's lab in Palo Alto, Ca, "It's not that we have no idea what's happening – we have too many." With so many researchers currently looking into the situation chances are that this particular hurdle will soon be crossed and blue light lasers can begin transforming the world around us.

Source: Blue Laser Boasts Tech Advances
John Yaukey
USA Today, July 6, 2001
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ccarch/ccyau008.htm