Semiconductor laser diode
Diodo láser de semiconductor
- Date
- 1962 · confidence high
- Place
- General Electric, Syracuse; IBM, Yorktown Heights; MIT Lincoln Lab, United States (1962); Ioffe Institute, Leningrad (continuous wave, 1970)
- Credited to
- Robert Hall (GE), Nick Holonyak, Marshall Nathan (IBM), Robert Rediker (Lincoln); Zhores Alferov (Ioffe) and Herbert Kroemer (heterostructures)
- People
- 👤 Herbert Kroemer1928–2024👤 Nick Holonyak1928–2022👤 Robert David Hall1947–👤 Zhorés Alfiórov1930–2019
- Field
- Communication
What it is
A laser the size of a grain of sand made on a semiconductor chip. It is the light source of optical fibre, optical discs, laser printers and laser pointers.
What it led to
- Global-scale fibre communications
- The CD, DVD and Blu-ray
- Lidar sensors and 3D facial recognition
Built on
- The laser (and maser)1960
- Visible light-emitting diode (LED)1962
- heterostructures