New Kind of Ultraviolet Lasers and LEDs are Coming

A primary reason why CDs, DVDs, and Blu-Ray disks contain different amounts of data is that they use different frequencies of light to encode the information. Higher frequency light has shorter wavelengths, which means less space is required for a single bit, such as the 405 nm wavelength of Blu-Ray technology. Researchers have been trying for some time to use zinc oxide to create ultraviolet lasers, and now those at North Carolina State University have succeeded.