ANAN, Japan — A short wavelength laser that could essentially double or triple the capacity of an optical disk will be available for sampling from Nichia Chemical Industries Ltd. in February.
Nichia, which expects to become the first volume supplier of InGaN-based blue-violet laser diodes, next month will sample a 400-nanometer violet semiconductor laser with a lifetime of about 10,000 hours and a constant output power of 5 milliwatts. Production is expected to begin soon after sampling commences.
Nichia has already presented papers on laser diodes with lifetimes of 10,000 hours when operating at 2 mW output power. For commercialization, Nichia has improved the structure between the sapphire substrate and the laser diode structure.
The DVD Forum said a short wavelength laser in the blue or shorter range is the key component for a third-generation DVD-RAM disk with a capacity above 15 Gbytes.
