White laser diode from nichia

Sooo... I'm a bit confused as to what I'm looking at here. From what I can see, it uses a single diode and puts out white light. It appears to be a white laser diode, but the description is a bit confusing because it uses the word 'diodes' (plural) but when you look in the engineering sample data sheet, the drawing appears to only use one diode. Also, its hard to tell if the light coming out is coherent or not because it's coming out of fiber and its not focused. But I would assume since it's a laser, it would be. Also the data sheet mentions two parts; The diode and the luminescence part. I'm not quite sure what this implies, maybe it's some sort of weird hybrid.

What do you guys think? Am I missing something here or have they actually produced a white light laser diode? I didn't get super in-depth into the data sheet, I just gave it a quick skimming.

here's the link! Be sure to check out the data sheet as well.

http://www.nichia.co.jp/product/wlaser-main.html

I have sent them an e-mail asking for more details and price, nice find GG it all seems to point to one LD and white light....

Regards rog8811

Well its not coherent thats for sure , so its technically not a proper laser. We will just need to wait till they get back to Rog I guess.

Diachi

Diachi said:

Well its not coherent thats for sure , so its technically not a proper laser. We will just need to wait till they get back to Rog I guess.

Diachi

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Isn't white light incoherent since it is actually red green and blue light combined?

And although *if* that's true and it wasn't a "proper" laser, I'd still love to own a white laser! depending on price

thats what I said, I said : "Well its not coherent thats for sure , so its technically not a proper laser. We will just need to wait till they get back to Rog I guess. "

Anyway, it still would be cool if it was 3 lasers combined.

Look at the wavelength emission spectrum, it has a peak in the ~450nm range that corresponds to a lasing peak (nice and narrow, low FWHM), and a very wide peak centered ~550nm.

White LEDs are made using a blue LED with a white phosphor, combining to make white. To me, that spectrum looks like a blue laser being driven to fluoresce a yellow phosphor to make white light. Also, it gives the forward operating voltage as 4v, about right for a blue laser. So my guess is that it's a blue laser with a yellow-emitting phosphor, and it has to have the optics/fiber optic cable to make the blue and yellow come out combined properly instead of blue coherent light and yellow non-coherent light as it would be if packaged like a regular LED or laser diode.l

Looks like it may be LED's, here is the answer.....

Thank you for your interest in our product.
However, unfortunately our MicroWhite (white fibre light source based on
laser diode) must not be suitable for laser displays.
Please know that the MicroWhite no longer has any functions as a laser
but it is just an illumination.

From this respect we would like to decline your inquiry.

We are sorry for not being helpful to you.

with best regards.
Tonto


Regards rog8811

Not too specific are they? :-/ They should just give you the details and price and let you be the judge of how usefull it is to you

Basically if you need to ask for price they brush you off... :-[

I think what this is trying to say...

no longer has any functions as a laser
but it is just an illumination.

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.....This is not a laser it is an LED

That is how I read it anyway....the spec sheet is all a bit generic and I guess lost something in the translation.

Regards rog8811

They're probably using a laser to create high intensity white light LEDs.  White LEDs have special nanocrystals that convert blue light into green and red light, which combined with the blue produces a warm white color.  By using a blue laser they can efficiently produce a very intense source of blue light to generate white light in this manner.

Could you combine 593.5nm Yellow DPSS, with 473nm Blue DPSS. Instead of combining red, blue, and green. And get a more true white light?

Midknight said:

Could you combine 593.5nm Yellow DPSS, with 473nm Blue DPSS. Instead of combining red, blue, and green. And get a more true white light?

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not really, the human eye sees colors based on the three primary colors of light (RGB) so while i think combining blue with yellow would work, it wouldn't really be any more "pure" than RGB

MarioMaster said:

[quote author=Midknight link=1215338939/0#11 date=1215657601]Could you combine 593.5nm Yellow DPSS, with 473nm Blue DPSS. Instead of combining red, blue, and green. And get a more true white light?

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not really, the human eye sees colors based on the three primary colors of light (RGB) so while i think combining blue with yellow would work, it wouldn't really be any more "pure" than RGB[/quote]

I'm ordering a Rigel here soon, and this is one experiment I've been dying to try. You can get a true white from a multiline argon (light blue from blue and greeen) and a red, so it seems feasible to get white from yellow (from combined 671 and 532) and blue. Granted though, I'm sure my blue will destroy the Rigel in output, I think I'll have to use dead batteries and a beam splitter.

quadcam said:

[quote author=MarioMaster link=1215338939/12#12 date=1215659208][quote author=Midknight link=1215338939/0#11 date=1215657601]Could you combine 593.5nm Yellow DPSS, with 473nm Blue DPSS. Instead of combining red, blue, and green. And get a more true white light?

Click to expand...

not really, the human eye sees colors based on the three primary colors of light (RGB) so while i think combining blue with yellow would work, it wouldn't really be any more "pure" than RGB[/quote]

I'm ordering a Rigel here soon, and this is one experiment I've been dying to try.  You can get a true white from a multiline argon (light blue from blue and greeen) and a red, so it seems feasible to get white from yellow (from combined 671 and 532) and blue.  Granted though, I'm sure my blue will destroy the Rigel in output, I think I'll have to use dead batteries and a beam splitter.[/quote]

We know that one can make white while combining 671 and 532, because thats the normal way to do it, it's how it's done in the scanners and everything like that. R+G+B = white. But with the Rigel you're losing a color, whereas the argon you have like 6 different shades ranging from blue to green.

Now, that being said, I do think it's possible to make white or close to white with the yellow pointer. The only problem being is that it still wont really be 'true' white... if you put it through a prism you're still only going to get yellow and blue out the other end. Obviously we know what true white is every color in the spectrum, so the more colors you use, the better your 'real white' gets.

It is possible to make 'white' using only 2 colors, provided that these colours are on exact opposide sides of white in, for example, the CIE XYZ color chart (diagram here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIE_1931_color_space). This could equate to blue and orange, say 471 and something around 575nm.

White leds are usually dies emitting blue light combined with a fosfor that gives a pretty broad band in the yellow-orange part of the spectrum. This results in white light, but with limited color rendering ability. The latter would be even worse for white from 2 laser lines.

The nichia part seems to do exactly the same, but with a laser diode at ~440 nm and a phosphor to provide the rest of the spectrum. It think the advantage is that laser diodes can be very efficient, better than leds. Red lasers have efficiencies up to 30% or so, red power leds don't usually make it that far. Perhaps the same holds true for blue?