New Way to Make Nanowire Lasers

This nanowire, composed of cesium, lead and bromide (CsPbBr3), emits bright laser light after hit by a pulse from another laser source. The nanowire laser proved to be very stable, emitting laser light for over an hour. It also was demonstrated to be broadly tunable across green and blue wavelengths. The white line is a scale bar that measures 2 microns, or millionths of an inch. (Credit: Sam Eaton/UC Berkeley) Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and UC Berkeley have found a simple new way to produce nanoscale wires that can serve as tiny, tunable lasers. The nanowires, with diameters as small as 200 nanometers (billionths of a meter) and a blend of materials that has also proven effective in next-generation solar cell designs, were shown to produce very bright, stable laser light. Researchers say the excellent performance of these tiny lasers is promising for the field of optoelectronics, which is focused on combining electronics and light to transmit data, among other applications.