pctechguide.com

  • Home
  • Guides
  • Tutorials
  • Articles
  • Reviews
  • Glossary
  • Contact

The blue laser diode in optical disk drive technology

By the late 1990s blue lasers were used for making the masters for DVD discs, but this process used hugely expensive special laser-beam recorders the size of a wardrobe and needing a super-clean, vibration-free environment in which to work properly. The challenge for optical drive manufacturers was to enable blue laser technology to be effective in a form that would fit into the space afforded by a PC-ROM drive. However, getting a blue laser to fire out of a small enough diode at one end and not simultaneously punch a hole out of its rear end had stumped the world’s leading technologists for decades.

The objective was clear: to find a blue laser technology that was commercially viable. It had to be small, capable of being mass produced, and be affordable to run for home users – the amount of power the laser needs to produce is a lot for a device hardly bigger than a match-head. Almost from the outset, DVD’s limitations were known, so even while the DVD wars publically raged, scientists frantically sought for its successor in the research labs of industry giants worldwide.

One man, however, working away from the crowd, quietly developed an answer. Shuji Nakamura was pretty much unknown, and worked for what was then a very small time chemical company, the Nichia Corporation. Away from what he regarded as the controlling, stifling influence of conventional corporate wisdom, he used methods and materials that the big gun scientists had shunned. And yet, with comparatively limited funds and resources, Shuji was the one who made the breakthrough.

Shuji built upon work gone before. In the 1960s, RCA’s J.I. Pankove and team worked on creating a gallium nitride (GaN) light emitting diode (LED), aiming principally for a strong white light. They failed to create a marketable solution, but they had made strides. Further work published by Professor Isamu Akaski and team in 1985 was invaluable to Shuji, as they showed their method of creating strongly p-typed GaN – essentially, a form of gallium nitride with the correct properties for creating a bright LED. With this work as a basis, Nakamura honed the science, refined the method, and finally produced the solution: a mass producible GaN LED, which went into production in 1993, and provided the integral basis for blue laser optical disks.

A

Labeled

The above images show a blue laser diode, the first a photograph of an actual blue laser diode, magnified about five times. The drawing has external components labelled, and shows scale – clearly these pictures are magnified several times. The following image shows inside the lens casing.

Split

This cutaway shows inside the diode’s casing. Electrical impulse causes light from the photo-diode to be directed through the laser diode chip. Magnified and filtered, the blue laser light is emitted through the glass lens.

  • The blue laser diode in optical disk drive technology
  • DVD Forum and the Blu-ray Disk Association (BDA)
  • Blu-ray vs HD-DVD – the war of the blue laser optical disks
  • Blu-ray Region Codes
  • Blu-Ray – the Hi-Def Blue Laser Disk Technology
  • HD-DVD (High Definition Digital Versatile Disk) – blue laser optical disk
  • Blu-ray Disks (BD) – blue laser optical disk technology
  • Blu-ray region codes – map and explanation

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

Related

Filed Under: Blu-ray Tagged With: blue laser, blue laser diode, blue-violet laser, Shuji Nakamura

Latest Articles

AIT – Advanced Intelligent Tape – family of tape storage

(Advanced Intelligent Tape (AIT) was the first multisourced tape standard targeted at the midrange server market, which is typically characterised by systems that support 2 to 129 users in a commercial environment. Introduced in 1996, AIT was designed to support this key market segment with … [Read More...]

Object Oriented Programming 8

And that's it for our introduction to using Object Oriented (OO) design techniques. We've looked at inheritance, multiple inheritance and polymorphism, and you can see how designing the class tree structure in this way forces the designer to fully understand the problem. It also defines very … [Read More...]

Scheduling Tasks Cleanup

Open up the Scheduled Tasks tool from the Start menu, either via Programs > Accessories > System Tools ... ... or via Settings > Control Panel > Scheduled Tasks. It's likely that some tasks have already been automatically set up, either by Windows or applications that … [Read More...]

2021 PC Hardware Releases to Bolster Your Gaming

If you are a PC gamer, then chances are you are looking to upgrade your kit over the coming year. However, a lot of money can go into building the … [Read More...]

New Transfer Feature in Dropbox Enable Sharing files with Third Parties

Dropbox has been a popular P2P sharing platform for many years. They don't announce new features as often as other applications, since they have a … [Read More...]

Ransomware Operators Find Data Theft Profitable

How valuable is your data? That’s not a question that organizations or individuals have to ask themselves all that often. You might know the market … [Read More...]

Engineers Encounter the Quantum Challenge with Computers Running a Hundred Million Times Faster

Quantum computers have been a subject of discussion for many years. They have probably been something that philosophers and technology pundits have … [Read More...]

Transferring Image Files from Your Cell Phone Without Cables or Email

You don't have a cable available to transfer the photos from your cell phone to your computer? You don't feel comfortable sending them through your … [Read More...]

Why Drupal Accessibility is Vital for Your Website

Drupal may not be as popular as WordPress, but it is still used in over 1 million websites. The Internet might be more conducive to our needs if more … [Read More...]

Guides

  • Computer Communications
  • Mobile Computing
  • PC Components
  • PC Data Storage
  • PC Input-Output
  • PC Multimedia
  • Processors (CPUs)

Recent Posts

PMT Scanners

PMT is the sensor technology used by the high-end drum scanners used by colour prepress companies. Expensive and difficult … [Read More...]

Safety Standards For Computer Monitors

In the late 1980s concern over possible health issues related to monitor use led Swedac, the Swedish testing authority, … [Read More...]

CD-ROM DMA vs. PIO Mode

Traditionally, CD-ROM drives have used Programmable Input Output (PIO) rather than Direct Memory Access (DMA) for data … [Read More...]

[footer_backtotop]

Copyright © 2021 About | Privacy | Contact Information | Wrtie For Us | Disclaimer | Copyright License | Authors