Scientists at St. Andrews University have made significant breakthroughs in compact laser research

Scientists at St. Andrews University have made significant breakthroughs in compact laser research after decades of hard work.

Laser is widely used in fields such as communication, medicine, measurement, manufacturing, and measurement around the world. They are used to transmit information on the internet, for medical purposes, and even in facial scanners on mobile phones. Most of these lasers are made of rigid and brittle semiconductor crystals such as gallium arsenide.

Organic semiconductors are a relatively new type of electronic material. They have flexibility, are based on carbon and emit visible light, making the manufacturing of electronic devices simple. They are now widely used in OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) screens in most mobile phones.

One limitation of organic semiconductor lasers is that they typically require another laser to power them. For 30 years, researchers have been working hard to overcome this limitation, so scientists at the University of St. Andrews have recently developed an electrically driven organic semiconductor laser, which is particularly important.

The breakthrough achieved by the team, published in the journal Nature, first produced OLEDs with world record light output, and then tightly integrated them with polymer laser structures. This new type of laser emits a green laser beam composed of short light pulses.

At present, this is mainly a scientific breakthrough, but with future development, lasers may be integrated with OLED displays and allow communication between them, or used for spectroscopy to detect diseases and environmental pollutants.

Schematic diagram of the structure of an electrically driven organic semiconductor laser

Professor Ifor Samuel commented, "Manufacturing electrically driven lasers using organic materials is a huge challenge for researchers around the world. Now, after years of effort, we are pleased to have produced this new type of laser.

Professor Graham Turnbull added, "We hope that this new type of laser will consume less energy during the manufacturing process and will produce visible spectrum lasers in the future.

Source: Laser Network