- Joined
- Aug 25, 2007
- Messages
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Commercially, there's very little reason at this point to go beyond 520nm. I doubt we'll ever see commercial diodes above 520ish nm, because there's no commercial driving force to invest all the research money that would be necessary. Maybe some universities will have such things, but until there's a commercial application where companies can make money off of them, I doubt we'll ever see them.
The one thing I can think of at this moment is if (and I highly doubt it) someone wanted to try to make red lasers with the AlInGaN material system. If they did, then they would likely achieve yellow/orange on the way, but even then those diodes wouldn't ever be commercially produced to get the price down. For instance, 405nm and 445nm are now cheap, and 430nm is just as easy to produce as both those, but you never see it available because there's no mainstream commercial market. Same with everything between blue and green: 473nm, 490nm, etc are all easier to make than green diodes, but you'll likely never see them available because there aren't many mainstream commercial applications. Maybe one day we'll be pulling them out of DNA sequencers instead of big argon lasers. :crackup:
The peak human eye sensitivity is really relative to the lighting conditions. So 532nm might be brighter than 555nm in the dark.
