"Flying saucer" quantum dots hold secret to brighter, better lasers

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A research team led by University of Toronto's Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering ‘squashes’ the shape of nanoparticles, enabling inexpensive lasers that emit light in a customized rainbow of colours

A research team led by U of T's Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering ‘squashes’ the shape of nanoparticles, enabling inexpensive lasers that emit light in a customized rainbow of colours

Fresh insights into living cells, vivid video projectors and more accurate medical tests are just three of the innovations that could result from new lasers that use nanoparticles to create brighter light in a rainbow of colours. 

A new method, developed by an international research team from U of T's Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, Vanderbilt University, the Los Alamos National Laboratory and others produces continuous laser light that is less expensive, brighter and more customized than current devices by using nanoparticles known as quantum dots.

“We’ve been working with quantum dots for more than a decade,” says Ted Sargent, a professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at U of T. “They are more than five thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair, which enables them to straddle the worlds of quantum and classical physics and gives them useful optical properties.”

 

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Photo via University of Toronto.