Direct Green Laser Diode Technology Progress

500nm to 550nm Direct Green Laser Diode Development
This thread is intended for the collection of news and industry announcements for technological advancements and mass production plans for direct green laser diodes. Note the following catalog of web published articles sorted by the most recent first:

Aug 31, 2012
Meaglow: commercializing InGaN

Aug 2, 2012
SEMICONDUCTOR LASERS: Green laser diode emits at 536 nm

Jun 11, 2012
Smartphones Boost Projectors

May 31, 2012
MicroVision Receives >$4M Purchase Orders from Pioneer

May 30, 2012
LD Sales Listing - 60mW 510nm & 50 mW 520nm diodes

May 24, 2012
Scheduled WebCast - 15 June 2012 - Fundamentals of Photonics: Visible Green Lasers

May 15, 2012
Lasers – DGL, SHG, and Hybrid

May 14, 2012
Soothsayer 7: Microvision’s Obfuscations Causing a Buzzing Sound

May 9, 2012
The Display Playground: Microvision Official Blog - by Dawn Goetter
Sea of Green

May 8, 2012
Pioneer Introduces the New CYBER NAVI

May 7, 2012
Cyber Navi Video - uploaded by PioneerCorporationPR

May 3, 2012
Nichia 515nm 25mW Laser Diode Specs - Now Published
NDG1116-E.pdf [UTZ-SC0313_1] 2012/04/04

Apr 30, 2012
Soothsayer: Microvision’s Lance Evans “Green lasers alone are $200 each now”

It is just going to take more than 2 year for the brilliant people at the laser manufactures to figure out how to make the direct green lasers at a cost point that will lead to mass adoption.

Click to expand...

Dec 6, 2011
Karl Guttag on Technology » Welcome to Karl Guttag on Technology

The question is when will [Direct] green lasers be sold at a price, with the right wavelength, and are bright enough that they can spin up the market. Based on my 34 years of semiconductor experience and reading the “tea leafs”, I would say it is more than two years away (and a lot of people who know more than me about lasers say it is going to be longer)

Click to expand...

Dec 19, 2011
Insurance News - MICROVISION INC FILES (8-K) Disclosing Regulation FD Disclosure

Green laser diode production is cutting edge MEMS micro projector from joe spaz ymb | MVIS Message Board Posts

Karl Guttag on Technology » Diode Green Lasers (Part 1, Wavelength and Efficiency)

Dec 16, 2011
The Green Laser - Completing the Rainbow
Optics & Photonics News - September 2011

Dec 12, 2011 - They're Here
510nm Direct Green Diodes / Build Photos (DGH-N1, DGH-N2)

Dec 5, 2011
UCSB spin-off Soraa raises $88.6m
Semiconductor Today

Oct 27, 2011
Press Release/Nichia Corporation

Oct 25, 2011
MicroVision Announces Third Quarter 2011 Results - MarketWatch

Oct 17, 2011
NineSigma soliciting proposal (RFP 67572) for Direct Green Laser Technologies on behalf of Global Automotive Supplier . . . to be able to produce 5 million pieces per year
https://www.myninesigma.com/sites/public/_layouts/RFPs/NineSigma_RFP_67572.pdf

Oct 13, 2011
IEEE SCV-Photonics Chapter Meeting on Nov. 1 - KeyPoint Credit Union - San Jose Mercury News

Sept 13, 2011
VERTICAL-CAVITY SURFACE-EMITTING LASERS: Electrically pumped GaN-based VCSELs emit blue and green at room temperature - Laser Focus World

Aug 25, 2011
Optics & Photonics News - September 2011

August 23, 2011
TeraDiode Lands $3.2 Million in Defense-Related Contracts

August 23, 2011
Nanotechnology Now - Press Release: "Photonex 2011 - The Conference Programme is growing and online registration is now open: High power diode lasers & systems"

August 22, 2011
nLIGHT Raises $17.5 Million Investment to Accelerate Growth

August 15, 2011
New picosecond pulsed diode lasers at 500 nm and 510 nm by PicoQuant

July 21, 2011
MicroVision Announces Second Quarter 2011 Results

July 18, 2011
Soraa propels green lasers beyond 100 mW

July 13, 2011
Osram improves green laser performance

July 1, 2011
Laser Diode Module uses 515 nm green laser., Power Technology, Inc.
515nm 20mW IQ Green Laser Diode Module from Power Technology, Inc.

June 17, 2011
SPIE Newsroom :: Green lasers in action

June 17, 2011
PHOTONIC FRONTIERS: QUANTUM DOTS: Quantum dots address a range of new applications - OptoIQ

June 15, 2011
EpiCrystals sets sights on green laser ramp

June 15, 2011
Epicrystals Introduces New Green Laser Aimed at Pico Projectors | Picopros

June 13, 2011
Opus Microsystems unveils a direct-green-laser projector module, to be available by the end of 2011
Before It's News

Jun, 4, 2011
Direct Green Diode Lasers Mass-Produced - Omicron Laserage Laserprodukte GmbH (Photonics Spectra | Jun 2011 | FastTrack)

Mar 22, 2011
Laser+LCOS Technology Revolution
http://www.syndiant.com/pdfs/SID%202011%20Guttag-Hurley-Mei%2039-1.pdf

Dec 14, 2010
Osram set for green diode ramp in 2012

Nov 24, 2010
Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd. | Press Release (2010) Sumitomo Electric Announces Large Scale Production of the World?s First 2-inch Semipolar/Nonpolar GaN Substrates for Green Lasers.

Jul 8, 2010
Nichia to Start Sample Shipment of Green Diode Laser -- Tech-On!

Aug 13, 2009
Osram develops direct green-emitting laser diode - Laser Focus World

madmacmo said:

Jun, 4, 2011
Direct Green Diode Lasers Mass-Produced - Omicron Laserage Laserprodukte GmbH (Photonics Spectra | Jun 2011 | FastTrack)

Click to expand...

that video even tho off topic is really Interesting
take a look at 2:57 that's amazing.

I'm not too psyched about 522nm, but 515 will get my wallet running. From the articles I read there was a 25mw 515. Interesting stuff, nevertheless.

515 should be amazing at night....peak visibility and the beam gets scattered more than 532. Maybe 505 would be even better for nighttime beams?

File:Rayleigh sunlight scattering.png - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is pretty exciting news, thanks for keeping us up on the progress.

Next up hopefully they throw 20 of them in some cheap projector

Hope springs eternal.

years of green diodes only existing in theory, blue diodes at a cost of a brand new car...
...but once they want mass produce something with them, they become real and cheap

fu, economics. nobody thinks of us laser hobbyst

MicroVision sketches me out with their marketing tactics. I don't think they've actually innovated for ages now. I get news alerts for a number of laser related key words. Almost every week for the last year, MicroVision has released a "brand new" pico projector, with its own corresponding press writeup. However, when you actually look at each new product, you realize that it's the same "ShowWX+", but with support for XYZ different portable device. One week it's the iPod, the next week it's Blackberries, etc - which to the best of my knowledge has basically means a new SKU for a box with a different cable in it.

The company screams of desperation.

Just noticed this news:
Semiconductor Today

They better effin hurry up with those demonstrated 4 watt blue laser diodes !!! stupid demonstrations WE WANT MORE !!!!!! power

Thanks for putting this topic together. I'm still waiting to add a green direct laser diode to my collection. It seems they've been talking about these devices for years now, however no diodes have been seen outside of paper/lab. I suspect they are more difficult to fabricate than is admitted to.

The most interesting new development (IMO) in the plethora of links you listed are the VCSEL constructs. Unfortunately they are very low power ( < 1 mW)

Any direct diode > 500 nm or < 620 nm is needed and very desirable.

A great way to keep abreast of this kind of news, is to use Google news alerts. You can put in keywords, and once a day they'll send you any new news alerts that match your search. It seems to filter out news releases from generic boring search results.

+1, by the way, to madmacmo for aggregating this data and maintaining this thread so far. Thanks a lot! There's still more development to come!

First, thanks for posting the link over to my blog.

I'm a major proponent of green laser's for all projection and especially for pico projectors. I have written and presented many papers on the subject. But as much as I believe they are the "the future," this future is not going to be in 2012, at least not in any big way. I talk regularly with many of the big player in lasers (and will meet with some of them at CES). My personal opinion is that Microvision is misleading people about the state of Direct Green Lasers (DGL) in order to prop up their stock price and to sell more stock to stay alive. But then when I tried to give the true picture on my blog, it ran afoul of what they had been trying to get people to believe.

I also understand that the laser beam scanning concept seems to those that haven't looked at it in technical detail like it would be small and efficient, but there are are a lot of problems with it when it is understood better. I'm not trying to bash the concept per say, but rather point out some of these often overlooked issues. I will point out where the LBS companies spread false and misleading information and when they accused me (thinly veiled) of being a "false soothsayer" then I will take issue with their false claims.

While the controversy with Microvision was good for driving some traffic to my blog, I would really like to see more questions that have to do with laser projection in general and less on LBS/Microvision. So please feel free to come by and ask questions.

I haven't read your blog, but I do have the sense that Microvision is up to some sketchy marketing. I'll tell you why I say that -

I subscribe to press releases, and one of the topics I have a bunch of saved recurring searches on are pico projectors.

Well, for a pretty large portion of the year, I was getting press releases almost every week, about different "new" pico projector models that were being released by Microvision. Although it may be an exaggeration, it certainly felt like there was a new model being announced every week, for a period of many months.

Of course there weren't actually any new pico projectors. Microvision would just send out a new press release, claiming a "new model" any time they added a hardware partner. I got the press release about the ShowWX+ that supported Ipod, and it was this great "new pico projector" from Microvision. Then there was the pico projector model they released for BlackBerry, which again was promoted as a "new pico projector", even though really, I think it was just the exact same product with a different cable. Then they got really sketch-bag, added an HDMI cable, and started selling the "ShowWX+ HDMI". Again, it was billed as some great new pico projector, but it was the same unit, with the same specs (brightness, resolution, size, weight, look&feel, etc), just with a slight tweak to the name and a new format to support.

There are a number of examples like this, where Microvision tried to repackage the same stuff as something new. I got so sick of reading it, that I stopped subscribing to pico projector press releases all together. It really stunk of desperation. It's fine to be desperate in reality, but when you look that way, something's wrong. They were trying way too hard.

I don't understand what their stumbling block is at this point. Everyone is blaming their financial situation on the delays associated with direct green diodes, but I think that's bologna. If Corning has no more of their tiny DPSS modules to hold Microvision over until direct greens are affordable/viable, then there are lots of other options. Snake Creek has stuff that is as small as the Corning units (LaserHeads) and I've got a little DPSS "pico projector" crystal set that I bought on eBay for $99 that really wouldn't add any substantial bulk, even when coupled with an IR diode.

In other words, if Microvision is in trouble, it's not because of direct greens not being here, it's because they're doing something else wrong, somewhere.