WITH Taiwanese backing, Australian researchers are developing the next
generation of lasers for reading CDs and digital video discs. And they are doing
so using skills acquired while rebuilding a faulty piece of laboratory
equipment.
The researchers are aiming to make blue lasers鈥攏otoriously difficult to
produce鈥攚hich will quadruple the amount of information stored on and read
from a disc. An R&D company is being established in Canberra with this
goal.
The story begins about 10 years ago, when Chennupati Jagadish and his group
at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra bought a chemical
reactor to deposit thin films of materials on silicon chips so they could be
used as lasers. The reactor was a dud, so Jagadish and his team ripped it apart,
made significant modifications, and put it back together again. Today, using the
knowledge they gained, the ANU researchers are producing some of the
highest-power diode lasers in the world.
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Their timing is perfect. Demand for optoelectronic devices has gone through
the roof. High-power infrared lasers are used in broadband communications, for
instance. Just this month a company in the US, Spectra Diode Laser (SDL), sold
for a staggering US$41 billion.
In April Jagadish and ANU colleague Jim Williams announced the formation of a
company, Acton Lasers, to make such devices. At the same time, ANU launched a
second major initiative called BlueLab. BlueLab is a joint venture with Ledex, a
Taiwanese manufacturer of optoelectronic devices. The new firm鈥檚 focus is the
R&D of blue lasers. These will be used in the next generation of DVDs,
because they have a shorter wavelength than the present red lasers, and can
therefore be used to store and retrieve information at a much finer scale.
The first sample shipments of blue lasers made by a Japanese company, Nichia
Chemical, began early last year. But the production yields are miserable, with
the result that the tiny devices sell for between A$3000 and
A$4000 each. That is far too expensive for consumer products like DVD
players. So the challenge for laser makers is to bring the price down to between
A$10 and A$20.
At BlueLab, that task will be the responsibility of Gang Li, one of the most
enthusiastic of the reactor rebuilders in Jagadish鈥檚 group. Li left ANU in 1998
to join the National University of Singapore. By the end of that year, Li was
producing blue LEDs, the first step towards the blue laser. It was a remarkable
achievement, and drew the attention of Ledex president Tony Wu.
Both Li and Wu had gained degrees from Australian universities and had become
Australian citizens. So familiarity with local conditions was one reason they
decided to base their R&D in Australia.
Another reason was a package of incentives offered by the ACT government. But
even more important than these incentives was the supply of skilled people.
ANU has already trained two of Ledex鈥檚 engineers. And BlueLab is looking for
about 15 more, and another 15 support staff. The company begins its activities
in September.