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Science Technology

Plastic Lasers 55

Posted by michael from the ray-gun dept.
sdodson writes: ""Researchers at the Bell Laboratories of Lucent Technologies have created the first solid laser from organic materials... which have been dubbed 'plastic lasers'... " and "can be relatively easily manipulated to emit light ranging from ultraviolet to infrared." These new lasers will require less power, and will have many applications in communications as well as medicine. The New York Times has the article." This will be big. Of course, it's still a long way down the road.
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Plastic Lasers More

Plastic Lasers

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  • Cyclops!!! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Aren't "organic lasers" the stuff that come out of Cyclops eyes when he takes his glasses off?
  • When I saw the article header, I wondered what made these lasers different and special from something like Rodamine 6G saturated polycarbonate- now I know. Try the logical progression of that technology that Cambridge Display Technology and several other companies have come up with- Organic LEDs (otherwise known as Light Emitting Plastics, or LEPs). Wonder where they'll take this tech; it's got some interesting prospects- things that would be prohibitively expensive might just become relatively inexpensive and easy to make (like laser gyroscopes, etc...).
  • I guess the NYT 'phoned someone, 'coz this isn't mentioned at Lucent... 6000 DPI... that would make a really nice laser printer, but let's plug that into current technology.

    Here I sit, before my 17" laser-powered flatscreen. 17" == 10.2" high x 13.6" wide == 61200 x 81600 pixels == 4.9gigapixels (== 624MB monochrome - colour depth for anti-aliasing? On goggles, maybe). It would take this here Voodoo Banshee card several seconds just to clear or scroll that sucker. I can fit a whole twelve screenshots on my hard disk, and emailing them out through this here modem would take days!

    This implies an intelligent, probably distributed, video controller built into the screen itself. And an end to eyestrain, although an xterm based on the 10x20 font would be 600 characters wide x 300 characters high for a square inch of display space. Who remembers the "unreadable" font? Welcome to the "perfectly readable - up very close" font!

    Then next year, the colour version! Actually, since the base material is transparent when not lasing, an Alpha index of 0 would show you whatever was behind the monitor.
  • Believe me, they can if you shine it right into their pupil. That's a lot more light energy going into their eye than if they look directly at the sun.

    "What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is"

  • http://ww w10.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/07/biztech/article s/28laser.html [nytimes.com]

    Oh when, oh when will people learn to substitute www. with www10.
  • How is this much different from dye lasers?

    Well, for one, it's a solid-state laser, as you say. It doesn't readily break down under the operating stress, as most organic lasers would. And it doesn't need a laser pump... you can charge it up with plain ole' electrical power.

    The "plastic" label is a major misnomer, though. Tetracene (as do most polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) has more in common with graphite than, say, nylon. It's the roving electrons in the torus-shaped pi-clouds, melded together over the multiple benzene rings, that conduct the electricity and give these compounds their electric and optical activity.

    It prolly took quite a bit of cojones to develop this thing, as tetracene is quite explosive [ordnance.org].

    THS
    ---

  • Doesn't plastic come from oil? Doesn't oil come from dead organisms? Aren't organisms organic?
  • "Ray gun"-style directed energy weapons require high power."
    Isn't there also a problem with energy dispersion? I seem to recall that particle beams are more effective than lasers as the lasers tend to heat alot of air. No problem in re: to medical procedures (as you aren't trying to go through miles of air to reach your target).
  • Actually the number of electrons/sec is the amplitude of the "wave". Frequency is a measure of a characteristic of each individual photon. Consider a swarm of people. The number who pass by is expressed in people/sec (a large or small wave of pedestrians), but the color of each person is independent (the "frequency" of that photon-person).
  • The NYTimes refered to the journal Science, and indeed www.science.com has it listed. Unfortunately its a subscription site, and my school's library doesn't include that particular online journal. (Also, I noticed that while they mentioned the name of the journal the Times didn't provide *any* links (!) at all... :-(
  • Exactly! Although if you'll permit, methinks you meant "up to" UV>
  • Actually silicon's position directly underneath carbon indicates it also forms 4 bonds. And indeed polymers of silicon are known...for instance the silicone used for weather proofing window cracks.
  • In order for nanotech to really make it mass production is necessary. Self-replication rather than pushing molecules around with an Atomic Force Microscope. Biochemistry meets Physical Chemistry and Physics (at least) and Molecular Biology before its really "ready for primetime".
    How to encourage such cross disciplinary tracks? Most departments are territorial enough to almost seem to have moats surrounding their buildings and equipment. As a Physics grad student I am warned away from computational quantum chemistry "because its not really Physics, you know". The computational chemists I talk to are into analytical chemistry (as though biochemistry "isn't really Chemistry").
    A Goldwater scholar at here recently graduated with BS(s) in Math, Physics, Chemistry, and Computer Science. He was advised that he was really hurting himself, as no one would take him seriously. "You have to focus or people won't think you can. The position you will be seeking will be in a field. The other degrees will detract from your chances."
    Even though he recieved a Rhodes Scholarship upon graduating he is still refered to here as a black sheep.
    The problem with such pigeon-holing is that it makes it hard to think outside the paradim. In reference to energy generation, U.C. Berkley recently took the approach of modifing an organism to use photosynthesis to seperate water into hydrogen and oxygen. Yet our chair and local solar energy expert are without interest because its not a solid state device. *sigh*
  • It's interesting the NY Times focuses on the medical and scientific uses of the technology. If the efficiency of the plastic laser scales well, then defense applications would seem to be a profitable market for the idea. Why don't they mention directed energy weapons?

    Of course, the most exciting application of the technology will be the full-color home laser light show from the Sharper Image.
  • In chemistry, organic simply refers to the anything involving carbon. Don't confuse it with biochemistry, although there is some overlap. Plastics are organic materials.
  • jeesh, I can remember way back around 1976 or so that we had plastic lasers as a kid.

    Of course we called them "light sabres", and we made strange "OHHHM VMMMM" noises as we brandished them treateningly at our playmates.
    ---
    Interested in the Colorado Lottery?
  • Unfortunately, Lucent is pretty bad at bringing things to market. I'll give you an example. There are two methods for etching computer chips. One is X-Ray lithography, and the other is electron-beam lithography. I'm not sure, but I think Lucent invented X-Ray lithography last year.

    This will allow Grove's law to continue. It should ALSO have given Lucent a monopoly of sorts that is worth billions of dollars (potentially doubling the value of the business).

    That's not what happened.

    Hopefully some other company will license the technology and bring it to market in Internet time.

  • i guess thats why they call it Karma. you wh0re ;)
  • Sure they have the ability to turn into WONDEROUS and AMAZING technological tools. But 20 bux says they will just make it easier to piss people off at the movies and make nervous people wet their pants and drop to the floor. Damn I love science.
  • I think it might be more accurate to say that there will be a blurring between "manufacturing" and "growing." When you include nanotechnology, which draws at least as much from organic principles as it does from traditional manufacturing processes, the most basic concepts of mass production are undergoing some fundamental changes. Granted, it is likely to be some time before we see the full fruits of this. We are just entering the "vacuum tube" stage of this technology.
  • Those already exist, if you look at the bottom of this page [amazing1.com].

    Pulsed high power laser system is hand held and battery operated. Device is labelled as a class 4 laser product and meets all NCDRH requirements. It uses a 3"x1/4" Nd:Glass rod with integral mirrors as the lasing medium. Design is intended as an advanced science project or serious laser demonstration product.

    Output is 1 to 3 joules at a 500 usec pulse width equating out to a 6000 watt pulse! This is sufficient to blast small holes in the hardest of metals once the beam is properly focused.

  • Does this mean that I can have a personal ray gun now? 'Course there's the waiting period. Then the arguments of whether it's for hunting or not. That, of course, begs the question, "Do lasers kill people, or do people kill people?"

    I think I'll just go back and lie on my couch now.
  • I've been fearing this development in technology. How long before the Zurge outfit their Hydrolisks and Mutalisks with these organic lasers?? Like the Terran and Protoss didn't have enough trouble after the Zurge got that lurker/Devourer upgrade; now they have to deal with acid being spit in their faces with a tolerance of +/- 2cm.
  • And I was all worried that if I accidentally hit a certain lasing frequency I'd blow the wall out of my bathroom... uh, I mean my bedroom ;-)
  • You can buy a ruby laser pistol from www.futurehorizons.net (sorry, don't know html)
    look in their laser section
    "Ruby Laser Pistol-
    Star Wars weapons technology of the future is now
    here! With this handheld battery operated Ruby Laser Pistol you can burn holes through metals, perform spot welding, and blow holes through many materials at considerable distances. This laser produces an explosive coherent burst of visible red light which is capable of great damage to human tissue! Safety precautions and operational procedures included.
    #RULP Plans----$20.00
    #RULZ Fully assembled----$1,800.00 "
  • That would be truely awesome. If I wanted to take it somewhere, I could just roll it up and put a rubber band around it. Or, if I wanted to use it, I could just put it on a frame (ala projector style). I wonder when they will get around to doing this?
  • It's actually quite different from dye lasers. People have made solid dye lasers before - you can dope the dye into a sol-gel material and end up with something like a dyed glass, which will then work as a laser. (The major problem is that you can't operate them continuously, so you make them in a disc form and spin them.) And, as you said, you need another laser to pump them. In this case, they seem to grow a continuous crytal of an organic molecule, which forms some kind of organic semiconductor. The crystal is then directly electrically pumped. If they can change the organic molecule slightly and alter the tuning range, that will be extremely useful, especially if they can get down to the UV.
  • Well, to be anal right back attcha... In a chemistry sense, organic means compounds with carbon in them. Plastics, polymers, benzene, etc...
  • The problem with this "optical transistor" would be that it would have the lag/signal loss/noise of the photodector added in. The only way to determine freq. is to measure the number of electrons released per photon, or use a difraction grid. Neat idea though.
  • But since it appears likely that the plastic laser will be able to produce light with smallers wavelengths than conventional lasers it also means a jump in the potential for storing data using the same techniques as CDs and DVDs.

    There is a double-win possible here. Not only would it be possible to increase the density of information stored on a CD/DVD/etc., but if it is possible to fit over 6000 of these in a single inch, it would then be possible to have a strip of these reaching over the entire width of the recordable surface of the media. There would no longer be a delay waiting for the read/write head to seek to the correct track -- it would already be there!

    Of course, there is still the matter of rotational delay, but that could also be cut in half by having an additional strip of lasers extending across the center of the disc and on to the other side. (Picture a strip of lasers crossing the diameter of the circle.)

    Still further: if a higher track density than 6000 tpi is possible in the optical media (for that wavelength) then it would only be necessary to mount one (or more) additional laser strips along the axis and parallel to the first, but offset by the desired track width.

    Just wait until some 3D Myst-ery Game [slashdot.org] designer mates this fast-access, high-density storage medium with top-quality images and graphics, a DTI Stereoscopic LCD Virtual Window [slashdot.org] 3D LCD display, and joins forces with An Overclocking Junkie [slashdot.org] who then hooks a few of these together with an optical network using perfect mirror [slashdot.org] optical cables to build the ultimate gaming network!


  • Now I can have my shartks with friggin lasers to kill Austin Powers!

    Hugs and Kisses,
    Dr. Evil

  • Why don't they mention directed energy weapons? A couple of reasons: Damage thresholds of plastic lasers are quite low. To use this thing as a weapon, you need a lot of power coming out of it, much more than it can handle. And for those of us who haven't been outside in a while, the sky is actually blue. This is because Rayleigh scattering goes as the 4th power of the frequency. Scattering attenuation will be severe.
  • The 'lasers' mentioned in this article sound a lot like the already available organic LEDs (by Pioneer). Also, I know Philips is working on Poly-LEDs (LEDs made of real polymere, no organic materials used) which have even greater advantages over organic LEDs. Is this in the same league or are we really talking about something new?
  • Yes, it's been done before but those login required sites annoy me to no end.

    Go here [nytimes.com].

  • I wrote:
    Congratulations for stating the obvious. Assuming someone has had freshman high school biology, this should be pretty apparent.

    The Alik wrote:
    Go look up the thread a few comments. Notice the people talking about lasers made from plants and biological nanotech. So much for apparent facts.

    I actually didn't get given the "organic == carbon" fact until I took organic chem in college. Maybe you had it in freshman high school bio, but many people didn't.

    And besides, this is Slashdot. Stating the obvious is generally necessary.

    Point taken. Actually I can't remember when they pounded in that organic = carbon, but it was before organic chem. Sorry for jumping on your case.
  • Now I could be blowing smoke, but I'm positive I saw an article about a chap in Britain who had quite successfully managed to get the common Jelly Baby to lase. I believe the red ones worked best. I'd love to provide a link to this but that confounded Doctor Who has taken over the search engines.
  • Does this mean that old Lazer Tag might be worth something?
  • The laser is different from the OLEDs (including polymeric LEDs). What you are thinking of is simply contains an organic light emission layer, where there is not the cohesion of laser light. The article in Science makes this distinction as well as the fact that electrically pumped organic lasers have not been made before due to the high energy lost from light absorbtion of amorphous materials (ie polymers). This laser that was made used the boundries of the crystal to bounce the light back and forth to get the cohesive light associated with the term laser.
  • Actually, silicone is not a completely silicon polymer. By that, I mean it has different atoms in the backbone. It's structure is like
    -(Si(R2)-O)n-

    The more interesting silicon polymer is polysilane. This polymer has a pure silicon backbone that is actually a photoconductor. (meaning that when you shine a light on it, it conducts electricity. Unfortunately, the polymers tend to degrade rapidly upon exposure to light, so it's not very useful in the near future.
  • "Organic" lasers! Instead of killing you by blasting toxic lead bits all about the environment, the laser biodegrades you extremely rapidly about the point of contact with the rest of you following at a natural pace!
  • If the frequency can be easily and rapidly controlled.. you could couple this with a photodetector and match frequencies.. in effect producing an optical transistor. Such an advancement would for all intents and purposes revolutionize the industry.
  • Combine this with some nano-engineering, and the previously discussed "Perfect Mirror" Cables [slashdot.org], and we might actually be on the way to optical computing, not to mention better optical networking in general.

    #include "disclaim.h"
    "All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
  • >I suspect that the average Slashdot reader is not composed of Teflon.

    You carbon-supremecist bigot! You and your stupid little carbon compounds think you're the only lifeforms on earth, don't you? Well think again, buddy! Without us silicates, the Internet would be nothing but a couple of Carbonites passing slips of paper around in a room. What way is that to treat your dead trees anyway - turning them into things to write on? No, carbon-based lifeforms don't even stick up other carbonys.

    We silicates, on the other hand, will rule the world by 2010. We will refuse to be made into glasses and half the world's population will go half blind. Ha!
  • Actually, a more approriate display technology to take advantage of these would be projection video. If set up a 1600 x 1200 array these behind a projecting lense, you should be able to create virtually any size 1600x1200 monitor just by projecting it onto a white surface.

    You could use this for computing or hi-res TV, or perhaps even for projecting digital movies at theatres (an even higher resolution may be required for that).


    Help [206.253.208.199]
  • DNA is a polymer, so is collagen and both are found in the average Slashdot reader.

    Point. I don't normally think of them when I think of polymers, but most biological macromolecules are indeed polymers. (I will point out, though, that most polymers with which the average person is familiar are not biological.)

    Most plastics are made from petroleum, which formed from the decomposition of micro-organisms, so plastics are organic as well.

    And? I believe I said that they were organic, but that they weren't normally found in living organisms, thus demonstrating that an organic is not equivalent to a biological.

    Congratulations for stating the obvious. Assuming someone has had freshman high school biology, this should be pretty apparent.

    Go look up the thread a few comments. Notice the people talking about lasers made from plants and biological nanotech. So much for apparent facts.

    I actually didn't get given the "organic == carbon" fact until I took organic chem in college. Maybe you had it in freshman high school bio, but many people didn't.

    And besides, this is Slashdot. Stating the obvious is generally necessary.
  • I wouldn't say that about all organisms, for example John Katz is defenetely a silicon based life form. If all of us were silicon based, then we wouldn't call plastics organic. BTW. not all plastics are made of oil.
  • On the other hand Pamela Anderson is also silicon based! See the pattern?
  • It is an incredible moment. The day will come when everything we use will be grown. Already, people are starting to realize how easy it is to use the passive energy of the sun to fuel the manufacturng process.
  • So I guess this revolutionary technology leap will allow our schoolchildren
    to blind their teachers, football antiheroes, parents and friends with blue lasers now? :)

    I can just see the little idiots shining their rainbow adjustable human blinding
    tools around at concerts and riots, oh the joy... oh the rapture...

    :)
  • This will mean that lasers can be made cheaply much easier and that will open up possiblities that were never thought of before, they will allow much more usage in medical purposes as they can be made so cheaply, and of course they will be much lighter.
    Faster computers networks will be able to be created and so world powers will be able to lay then under the sea and beam top secret messages about taking over the world to each other.
    As the article says, the possiblities are endless!

  • more info from Lucent (Score:3)

    by kootch ( 81702 ) on Saturday July 29, 2000 @05:30AM (#895781) Homepage
    the official Lucent [lucent.com] press release is here [lucent.com].

    also, I don't know where the "plastic" idea came from, but these lasers are grown out of tetracene, an organic molecule with four connected benzene rings that conducts well. When they injected an electric current through this, the light bounced back and forth between mirrors in the material, eventually producing beams of intense yellow-green light

    there is nothing in the original release mentioning "emit light ranging from ultraviolet to infrared". From the official PR, "Because the current configuration of the Bell Labs organic laser operates at a visible wavelength, it is not yet appropriate for optical communications. "

    In closing, how did this story submission get accepted without even a link to Lucent's own web page or PR page with the official release? Is slashdot now requiring only second and third hand information from such trustworthy sources as the NYTimes?

    2000-07-28 16:49:22 Lucent creates first organic laser (articles,news) (rejected)

  • dye lasers (Score:3)

    by tie_guy_matt ( 176397 ) on Saturday July 29, 2000 @05:37AM (#895782)
    How is this much different from dye lasers? I will admit that dye lasers -- organic material in liquid form -- are a pain to deal with and it would therefore be nice to have the organic material in solid form.

    dye lasers are tuneable (although each dye is only tuneable over a narrow range so anyone who uses a dye laser has a shelf full of different dyes) because they have so many resonance lines. This also makes them rather inefficient. Typically you need a huge laser to pump the dye laser and in the end you don't get much energy out of the dye.

    The New york times article says most laser are in the red or infrared. What have they been smoking? Recently they even came out with a blue semi conductor laser. This laser will inrease the data you can put on a DVD. There have also been lasers like ND:YAG and others that work in the green or higher. Of course you can always use non-linear optics to multiply the frequency and push your laser to ever higher frequencies. They have had multi color laser for years!

  • no login link (Score:4)

    by Th3 D0t ( 204045 ) on Saturday July 29, 2000 @03:08AM (#895783)
    here [nytimes.com]
    ---

  • Great stuff (Score:4)

    by Dan Hayes ( 212400 ) on Saturday July 29, 2000 @03:18AM (#895784)

    Since these "plastic lasers" can be made in the form of a film or "microdiscs" (of which over 6000 can fit in a single inch) the uses for these are amazing - they can be used for display devices such as monitors or even as optical switches and transmitters for computer circuits.

    But since it appears likely that the plastic laser will be able to produce light with smallers wavelengths than conventional lasers it also means a jump in the potential for storing data using the same techniques as CDs and DVDs. A smaller wavelength means a greater density is possible, which is always a good thing.

    More information can be found here [utah.edu].

  • About the word "organic" (Score:5)

    by Alik ( 81811 ) on Saturday July 29, 2000 @04:05AM (#895785)
    "Organic" does not mean it is made from a plant, or that it is somehow a natural material. The word "organic" is used here in the same context as "organic chemistry", and simply means that the chemicals and crystals under study contain carbon chains. Most of the molecules in living things are some kind of carbon structure with things hanging off of it; therefore, these kinds of molecules were declared the "organic" molecules. There are plenty of organic molecules which are never found in your body, though. Most plastics and polymers are organics. I suspect that the average Slashdot reader is not composed of Teflon.

    (Given that this laser is based on a benzene derivative, it may be a compound one finds somewhere in nature, but I wouldn't bet on it.)

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