Toshiba Develops Blue-Purple Laser for Next-Generation Digital Storage

Scientists at Toshiba Corp. have generated 417-nm pulses using a GaN semiconductor laser powered at room temperature. The company's metallorganic chemical vapor deposition technique made the development possible by controlling the phase boundary of the ultrathin GaN crystal and stacking thin layers, thereby creating a structure of multiple quantum wells. Toshiba seeks to develop the next-generation, superfine digital video disk, which will have a capacity of 15 GB, three times that of current technology.