Corning unveils improved green laser

01 Jun 2010

Corning says that its new green laser is the ideal light source for embedded microprojection applications.

Corning believes that its new G-2000 green laser demonstrates the industry's highest commercially available performance in terms of optical power, efficiency and bandwidth. As a result, the company says that the laser is well suited to meet the demands of the growing market for portable microprojection devices.

"The microprojection market presents a very large opportunity for our customers. That's why the development of a winning light-source solution – one that is bright, small and easy on a battery – is so important," says Thomas Mills, general manager, Green Lasers, Corning New Business Development. "The G-2000 is brighter, faster and more efficient than any other green laser commercially available today. With these benefits, it can provide our customers a much needed competitive edge over alternative solutions, like LED-based projectors."

The G-2000 green laser is said to be 30% brighter, 60% more efficient and offers 20% better bandwidth than its predecessor, the G-1000. Corning's accesses the green by converting infrared light generated by a distributed Bragg reflector laser diode. The conversion is provided by a second harmonic generation crystal with a waveguide structure, where light is frequency doubled.

As microprojection moves toward mass adoption in the consumer electronics industry, performance requirements are becoming increasingly demanding. Device makers now want projectors with a brightness of greater than 10 lumens, wide video graphics array (WVGA, 800 × 480) resolution or better, and at least two hours of battery life.

According to Corning, the G-2000 has the following specifications:

80 mW of optical power, enabling up to 20 lumens projection;
8% wall-plug efficiency and longer battery life;
modulation speeds of up to 150 MHz, enabling wide extended graphics array (WXGA, 1440 × 900) resolution;
consistent green power across a 10–60 °C temperature range, providing thermal stability over wide temperature ranges and extended use periods;
4 mm height and slim footprint that enables embedded microprojection in today's ultra-slim mobile devices.

"With the market shifting to greater than 10 lumens brightness and resolution of WXGA, we need to develop solutions that place us ahead of the competition," says Andrew Hung, president of Opus Microsystems, a leading provider of MEMS-based picoprojector solutions to enable new-generation mobile projection applications that is currently evaluating the G-2000 in multiple picoprojector designs. "The optical power, efficiency, and modulation frequency demonstrated by Corning's G-2000 green laser make it possible for us to deliver on these demanding requirements."

The Corning G-2000 green laser is currently being sampled by customers. Commercial production is estimated to begin later in 2010.