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Nanowire-based injection lasers shine brightly
In electrically driven laser systems, laser light is produced when positive and negative charges that have been injected on opposite sides of a heterojunction are driven to recombine. Now, Harvard University chemistry professor Charles M. Lieber and research associates Xiangfeng Duan, Yu Huang, and Ritesh Agarwal have used a single-step procedure to construct injection lasers based on cadmium sulfide nanowires and a novel charge-injection scheme [Nature, 421, 241 (2003)]. The CdS-based devices emit intense light in the visible region. But according to the researchers, radiation in the UV to near-IR spectral region and multicolored laser arrays (shown schematically) can be produced by using nanowires of GaN, InP, and other materials.
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