Soraa demos record 4W blue laser diode 450nm at SPIE Photonics West 2011 conference. Soraa also presented results from 750mW single-mode blue laser diodes.
I was just wondering what would require so much light, but from reading it might just be replacing whats already in DLP just making it more effecient. Plus, I dont have the enough experience to harvest yet... someday though
There will be a demand for a smaller projectors with increased brightness, plus being able to get that much light out of a single diode eliminates the hardware and optics required to combine multiple lower power diodes.
I'm pretty sure this was announced a while ago.
IIRC, the 4W diode is an array and not single mode.
The 750mW variant is single mode.
Also, I mentioned that there is no way you are going to make a 4W blue hand-held with current technology (except for something modeled after the Hercules - active cooling, D batteries, etc.).
You're talking Watts and Watts of heat generated, plus some real fancy optics and a huge power source.