Sharp starts blue laser diode production
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Japanese consumer electronics maker Sharp  Corp.  said on Tuesday it has started the commercial  production of blue laser diodes, taking aim at a market with  strong growth potential.
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Sharp is planning to double production of solar electricity modules at a factory in Wales, it said Friday.
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Sharp shows off new developments in its screen technology at this week's Ceatec consumer-products trade fair in Japan.
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Dell Inc. is expected to add a splash of color to its laser printer lineup Wednesday with three new models for businesses and home-office users.
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Researchers with the University of California at Santa Barbara, working in conjunction with Intel, are preparing to announce today the next step in their joint plans to produce an entirely solid-state photonic processor assembly - a chip which processes data as light waves.
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A device from Argonne National Lab takes a fresh approach to generating t-rays.
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(InfoWorld) - Sharp is planning to double production of solar electricity modules at a factory in Wales, it said Friday. Behind the planned expansion is growing demand for solar energy systems in several European countries including Germany, Spain, Italy, Greece, and France. Sharp said long hours of sunlight coupled with electricity buy-back programs, which allow consumers to sell surplus electricity back to the power company, are driving the demand. The company will invest Â¥2.2 billion ($18.2 million) to take annual production to a total of 220 megawatts of panels. The factory in Wrexham began operations in early 2004 and is Sharp's second international solar module production base after a manufacturing plant in the U.S. Sharp's announcement comes on the same day that a major international report is expected to lay theÂ blame for global warmingÂ at the feet of man's actions. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)Â reportÂ will be published in Paris later Friday. Companies and consumers are becoming increasing concerned about the issue and some are investing vast sums of money in solar power systems that will likely pay off in the long run through lower power bills. Last year Google said it would build a 9,000-panel generation system to power its Mountain View, California, headquarters. The system will use Sharp panels. Sharp is one of the world's largest producers of photovoltaic panels, which convert sunlight into electricity. Last year it spent about Â¥3.5 billion increasing production at a factory in Japan to 600 megawatts per year.
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Japan's Sharp  said on Tuesday it  aims for 10 percent profit growth in the year starting in April  as it brings forward a planned capacity expansion at its  flagship LCD panel plant and drives LCD TV sales in China.
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(InfoWorld) - Researchers from Intel and the University of California at Santa Barbara have found a way to build low-cost "laser chips" that could eventually shuttle data around PCs at much higher speeds than today's copper wire interconnects. The researchers combined the properties of a compound semiconductor material called indium phosphide, which emits light constantly, and silicon, which can be used to amplify and direct that light. They sandwiched the materials together to create a single device that can be manufactured using standard chip-making techniques. The breakthrough, announced Monday, is significant because it could help the interconnect technologies that carry data between components in PCs and servers to keep pace with the rapid advances in processing power of the chips themselves, the researchers said. "This could bring low-cost, terabit-level optical 'data pipes' inside future computers and help make possible a new era of high-performance computing applications," said Mario Paniccia, director of Intel's Photonics Technology Lab, in a statement. The work may be several years away from commercialization, but the researchers expect eventually to be able to put dozens or even hundreds of lasers on a single chip, they said. Indium phosphide is already widely used to make lasers for fiber optic networks, but the cost of assembling and aligning the lasers makes them too expensive for the high-volume PC business. Silicon, on the other hand, can amplify and control light and could be used more affordably, but it is not an efficient generator of light itself. The researchers figured out a way to combine the two materials to build a "hybrid silicon laser" that can be manufactured using Intel's standard manufacturing techniques, keeping costs relatively low. To make the silicon laser they created a thin oxide layer roughly 25 atoms thick on the surface of each material. They then heated the oxide and pressed the two layers together, forming a single chip with a "glass glue" between them. Applying a voltage to the device generates light from the indium phosphide, which passes through the joining layer to be guided and controlled by the silicon. The laser light can send data between computer components at extremely high speed. This can be done using a "silicon optical modulator," which effectively turns the laser beam on and off at very high speeds to represent the 1s and 0s of computer code. Intel has already demonstrated a silicon modulator that can transmit data at up to 10Gb per second. Figuring out how to make the hybrid silicon laser was the last big barrier to using silicon-based optical devices in computers and data centers, the researchers said.
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Researchers from Intel Corp. have created the first continuous laser beam using silicon components, a development the chip maker called a major scientific breakthrough that could herald significant advances in communications and medicine.
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An electrically driven laser expands the range of photonic crystal devices.
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A laser capable of being focused to a spot on a rotating disk just 80 nanometers across, is what Fujitsu needed to be able to beat competitors Toshiba and Seagate, in the race toward terabit areal densities. Yesterday, Fujitsu announced they'd achieved that goal.
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Japan's Sharp Corp. plans to spend up to  200 billion yen ($1.91 billion) to build a cutting-edge  domestic plant to make liquid crystal display panels for  flat-screen TVs, a business newspaper reported on Sunday.
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Iogear's Bluetooth-compatible mouse uses a laser as its light source.
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Sharp Corp. (6753.T), the world&#39;s  third-largest LCD TV maker, said on Friday it would likely  build a new LCD panel plant in Sakai, Osaka prefecture, and the  final decision will be made by the end of July.
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SHARP EYES HIMEJI AS SITE OF NEW LCD TV PLANT--Sharp Corp.  is considering selecting Himeji, Hyogo Prefecture, as the site of its new plant for liquid crystal display television sets, informed sources said.
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Sharp has developed a Blu-ray Disc recorder that cuts costs by doing away with the tuner.