Gallium nitride (GaN) has emerged as one of the most important and widely used semiconducting materials. Its optoelectronic and mechanical properties make it ideal for a variety of applications, including light-emitting diodes (LEDs), high-temperature transistors, sensors, and biocompatible electronic implants in humans. In 2014, three Japanese scientists won the Nobel Prize in physics for discovering…
A Sharper Focus for Plasmonic Lasers
Lasers have become indispensable to modern life since they were invented more than fifty years ago. The ability to generate and amplify light waves into a coherent, monochromatic and well-focused beam has yielded applications too numerous to count: laser scanners, laser printers, laser surgery, laser-based data storage, ultrafast data communications via laser light, and the…