WITH Taiwanese backing, Australian researchers are developing the next
generation of lasers for reading CDs and digital video discs. And they are doing
so using skills acquired while rebuilding a faulty piece of laboratory
equipment.
The researchers are aiming to make blue lasers—notoriously difficult to
produce—which will quadruple the amount of information stored on and read
from a disc. An R&D company is being established in Canberra with this
goal.
The story begins about 10 years ago, when Chennupati Jagadish and his group
at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra bought a chemical
reactor to deposit thin…
