Kaai, Inc. (Goleta, CA), a company on the leading edge in commercializing green and blue laser diodes, has demonstrated green laser diodes emitting at 523 nm, the longest continuous-wave (CW) green laser-diode emission reported to date (note: these are true green laser diodes, unlike green laser pointers, which are frequency-doubled solid-state lasers pumped by IR laser diodes). Kaai displayed green and blue laser diodes last week at its private suite at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show (Las Vegas, NV).
Kaai's lasers are based on indium gallium nitride (InGaN) semiconductor technology and are fabricated on innovative nonpolar and semipolar GaN substrates. Direct diode green lasers offer dramatic improvements in size, weight, and cost over conventional gas or solid-state lasers (such as conventional green laser pointers) and enable a variety of new applications in consumer projection displays, defense pointers and illuminators, biomedical instrumentation and therapeutics, and industrial-imaging applications.
Kaai was founded by world renowned semiconductor laser pioneers Shuji Nakamura, Steven Denbaars, and James Speck of University of California, Santa Barbara. The management team is led by Richard Craig and is made up of commercial laser-industry veterans. Kaai is vertically integrated and operates a laser-diode fabrication facility in Santa Barbara, CA.
To learn more about Kaai, visit www.kaai.com or contact the company at [email protected].
Kaai at the Lasers and Photonics Marketplace Seminar
Paul Rudy, Kaai's vice president of business development, will be speaking at the Lasers and Photonics Marketplace Seminar on January 25, 2010, held by Laser Focus World in conjunction with SPIE at Photonics West 2010 (San Francisco, CA). Paul Rudy will be giving his talk at 4:10 pm.
John Wallace | Senior Technical Editor (1998-2022)
John Wallace was with Laser Focus World for nearly 25 years, retiring in late June 2022. He obtained a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and physics at Rutgers University and a master's in optical engineering at the University of Rochester. Before becoming an editor, John worked as an engineer at RCA, Exxon, Eastman Kodak, and GCA Corporation.