Laser collaboration

has announced a £3.8m collaboration with

and

and

to develop lasers for areas as diverse as biosensing, communications and instrumentation.

The four-year project will develop lasers, consisting of organic semiconductor structures, which are interfaced to control electronics via familiar light-emitting diode (LED) technology.

The Institute of Photonics and Department of Pure & Applied Chemistry at Strathclyde; the School of Physics & Astronomy at St Andrews; the School of Engineering and Electronics at Edinburgh; and the Department of Physics at Imperial will collaborate on research.

The project is supported by a grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

Strathclyde’s principal investigator and coordinator of the project Professor Martin Dawson said: ‘We are delighted to have this opportunity to contribute to continued UK leadership in organic and hybrid organic/inorganic optoelectronics. The challenge now is to produce these devices in compact and robust form under electronic control, and the partners in this project are perfectly placed to contribute the interfacing and complementary technologies needed.’

He added: ‘Our near-term goal is to produce components consisting of single-emitter organic lasers on blue LEDs in a form suitable for volume manufacture. Longer-term goals are to demonstrate optoelectronic interfaces and integrated circuits involving multiple laser and LED elements.’