industry red lasers
The Chililase standard product offering at Modulight ranges from 500 mW chips to 12 W fiber coupled laser modules and systems
range mobile phones and digital cameras. This add-on will allow the user to project images, typically the size of this magazine, onto flat, light-coloured surfaces. The output power demands for this particular application are not that challenging, typically requiring between 200 and 400 mW, which is comparable to the power used to burn information onto a DVD.
Increasing the output power of red,green and blue lasers from hundred of milliwatts to tens of watts enables colour projection systems to increase the image of the display
Many companies with existing red laser technology for optical storage will be looking to enter the market for picoprojector lasers, which require low-power, single- mode sources. We, however, are more excited by the larger scale projection applications that require watt level multimode lasers, sources that only a handful of laser companies are capable of producing.
Getting lasers into TV…
A major breakthrough in this market has been the launch the first laser-TV by Mitsubishi in early 2008. Widespread adoption of this class of TV has been hampered by its high price tag – although it has fallen since the launch of this product, a whopping 75-inch display based on this technology still retails for $3500.
Consumers are also enjoying the benefits of severe price erosion in the high-quality end of the large size LCD TV market, and now take it for granted that they can have a screen thickness of just a few centimetres.
This may deter some home cinema lovers from investing in bulky, laser projection TVs that have a thickness of up to 30 cm.
One possible scenario is that laser diodes will find greater deployment in TVs, although not in the way pioneered by Mitsubishi. Instead, they could be used as backlighting for LCD displays, replacing the LED backlit technology that is starting to dominate this market now. Switching to laser-backlit LCD-TV could improve the colour gamut of these displays, and also usher in the ultimate power-lean, ‘green’ LCD-TV technology.
Another market where lasers are starting to be adopted is that of business projectors. Companies such as Casio have released products on this market that combine the emission of a blue laser with a red LED and a green source involving a diode-pumped phosphor. This market, which requires sources with outputs of several Watts, is dominated by consumer-related products. If laser makers are to enjoy commercial success in this arena, they have to produce low-cost lasers with a very high level of performance.
... and onto the big screen Some of the most impressive projection systems are found in movie theatres, which number more than 115,000 around the globe. These theatres are moving towards new projection technologies that are digital, and in some cases capable of generating three- dimensional images. It will not be long before cinemas also start turning to laser-based projection displays that deliver incredibly bright images with wonderfully realistic hues and tones.
The inferiority of the incumbent lighting technology in cinema projectors, the Xenon lamp, is not restricted to colour temperature. It also has a very low efficiency, making it incredibly power hungry, and it is has to be replaced every 400-500 hours.
These weaknesses have encouraged projector manufacturers to investigate different lighting technologies using prototype laser sources. In
30
www.compoundsemiconductor.net August / September 2011
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157 |
Page 158 |
Page 159 |
Page 160 |
Page 161 |
Page 162 |
Page 163 |
Page 164 |
Page 165 |
Page 166 |
Page 167 |
Page 168 |
Page 169 |
Page 170 |
Page 171 |
Page 172 |
Page 173 |
Page 174 |
Page 175 |
Page 176 |
Page 177 |
Page 178 |
Page 179 |
Page 180