14 DAY TRIAL // A new solid state laser could provide novel environmentally friendly lighting solutions, by using high-efficiency fluorescent laser dyes in a high temperature co-polymer matrix. Solid state laser use a solid gain medium, like glass or a crystalline host material, but this one uses a new one, plastic.
The self-healing polymeric cross-linked gain medium uses the highly efficient fluorescent laser dyes in a new patented technology and can be created in various colors and industrial quantities. It can be shaped into laser rods of various sizes, or even in rotating disc gas media, films or rings.
Called Solid State Dye Laser Material (SSDLM), it can be pumped by a large number of optical sources, which include flash lamps as well as other lasers, according to Light Beam Industries, LLC, the company that is currently working on the project.
"There are also some very exciting medical, research, display, lighting and military applications which will be focused on by LBI. One such project will be using single pulse - very high powered SSDLM's (very compact), using chemical burst reaction as a pump source and high-damage threshold pyromethane-BF2 laser dyes," added President Mark Benson.
Nano-crystalline lasing structures will be the main focus of the research that aims to incorporate them into plastic matrices so that the completed device could be used in solar light collectors, electronic displays, in addition to the more common lighting devices.
"Very soon we will have wave-guide matched laser diodes and light emitting diodes (LED's) as optical pump sources," explains CEO John Darland. "This means that inexpensive - high powered lasers, pumped by off the shelf Diode Lasers - LED's would be readily available and would give research facilities, defense applications, colleges and others easy accessibility to lasers which cost thousands of dollars currently."