nano laser
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World's first room-temperature semiconductor plasmon nanolaser created by Berkeley scientists
We're big proponents of the idea that everything is better with lasers, and a team of researchers at UC Berkeley has created a new type of semiconductor plasmon nanolaser, or spaser, that could eventually find a home in many of your favorite devices. The big breakthrough is that Berkeley's spaser operates at room temperature -- previous spasers could only sustain lasing at temperatures below -250° C -- enabling its use in commercial products. Plasmon lasers work by amplifying surface plasmons, which can be confined to a much smaller area than the light particles amplified by conventional lasers. This allows for extreme miniaturization of optical devices for ultra-high-resolution imaging, high sensitivity biological sensors, and optical circuits 100 times faster than the electronic variety. There's no word on how soon the technology will be commercially available, so you'll have to wait a bit longer for your first laser computer.
How to cram three terabytes onto a CD-R
Okay, so there's no magic product (yet) that will literally burn three terabytes onto a writeable CD, but Harvard researchers are certainly getting closer to making it happen. The group has developed an "optical nano antenna" that's built onto an inexpensive, off-the-shelf antenna in order to bypass that pesky diffraction limit that prevents current lasers from focusing light onto a smaller spot than half its native wavelength. By utilizing two gold "nano rods" separated by a 30 nanometer gap, they have devised a method for a laser sporting an 830 nanometer wavelength to focus its beam onto a 40 nanometer area, allowing for mind boggling amounts of data to be written to an optical disc. While the integrity of the burn is more than sketchy using such a high resolution beam, the team of engineers are hard at work trying to improve and perfect the space-saving process. Until then, we suppose we're still stuck paying an arm and a leg (or two) for those spacious, burnable Blu-ray / HD DVD discs.[Thanks, Adam]
