Researchers build the world’s most powerful terahertz laser chip

Researchers build the world’s most powerful terahertz laser chip

Posted by maghestra on Wednesday, March 12, 2014 0

Researchers from the University of Leeds have built the world’s most powerful terahertz laser chip, setting a new record which more than doubles the output power recently achieved by a team from Vienna. The work has been funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

A paper in the Institution of Engineering and Technology’s (IET) journal Electronics Letters reports that the Leeds team exceeded 1W output power from a terahertz quantum cascade laser.

Terahertz waves, which lie in the part of the electromagnetic spectrum between infrared and microwaves, can penetrate materials that block visible light and have a wide range of possible uses including chemical analysis, security scanning, medical imaging, and telecommunications.

Widely publicised potential applications include monitoring pharmaceutical products, the remote sensing of chemical signatures of drugs/explosives in unopened envelopes, and the non-invasive detection of cancers in the human body.

However, one of the main challenges for scientists and engineers is making the lasers powerful and compact enough to be useful.

Professor Edmund Linfield, Chair of Terahertz Electronics at the University of Leeds, said: “The process of making these lasers is extraordinarily delicate. Layers of different semiconductors such as gallium arsenide are built up one atomic monolayer at a time. We control the thickness and composition of each individual layer very accurately and build up a semiconductor material of between typically 1,000 and 2,000 layers. The record power of our new laser is due to the expertise that we have developed at Leeds in fabricating these layered semiconductors, together with our ability to engineer these materials subsequently into suitable and powerful laser devices.”

Professor Giles Davies, Chair of Electronic and Photonic Engineering, said: “The University of Leeds has been an international leader in terahertz engineering for many years. This work is a key step toward increasing the power of these lasers while keeping them compact and affordable enough to deliver the range of applications promised by terahertz technology.”

The news featured widely in specialist publications.

Reference: 19/14

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