5 January 2011

Soraa demos green lasers for >20lm pico projectors with minimal speckle

Soraa Inc (formerly Kaai Inc) of Goleta CA, USA, which is commercializing green and blue laser diodes, says it has demonstrated green laser diodes (LDs) suitable for >20 lumen pico projectors. The direct-emitting green lasers have produced images that exhibit much reduced speckle compared with conventional green lasers based on second-harmonic generation (SHG).

Soraa’s green laser diodes output more than 75mW of continuous-wave (cw) power in the 520–525nm range, are single spatial mode and multi spectral mode. They can also be directly modulated at the high speeds required for high-resolution displays with minimal speckle. The firm says that the laser diodes are suitable for all pico-projector display generating technologies, including LCOS, scanning MEMS mirrors DLP, and other diffractive approaches. The new green devices also complement Soraa’s previously announced blue 450nm laser diodes, which already exhibit what is claimed to be industry-best efficiency and power.

Soraa was founded in 2008 (as parent company to Kaai Inc) by University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) professors Shuji Nakamura, Steve DenBaars, and Jim Speck. The management team is led by former Intel and Samsung executive Eric Kim, and consists of commercial laser industry veterans. Soraa is funded by Khosla Ventures and NEA, and operates vertically integrated fabrication facilities in Silicon Valley and Santa Barbara.

Soraa’s lasers are based on indium gallium nitride (InGaN) technology and are fabricated on non-polar and semi-polar GaN substrates. The firm says that its direct-diode green and blue lasers offer improvements in performance, size, weight and cost over conventional gas or solid-state lasers for consumer projection displays, defense pointers and illuminators, biomedical instrumentation and therapeutics, and industrial imaging applications.

Soraa is displaying green and blue laser diodes in its private suite at this week’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2011) in Las Vegas, NV (6–9 January).

Tags: Soraa Green laser diodes

Visit: www.soraa.com