Laser diodes may be used to power high-speed internet in future, says Nobel laureate

Laser diodes, used in some car headlights, will eventually replace LEDs to become the most dominant form of lighting and will boost wireless communication by leaps and bounds, according to Nobel laureate Shuji Nakamura, co-inventor of the blue light-emitting diode (LED).

While addressing a press conference at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo, Nakamura, a materials science professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, listed the limitations to LEDs by saying that when power is increased, LEDs although become very bright but their efficiency decreases gradually, reported PC World.

In contrast, the input power for laser diodes can be increased endlessly with very high efficiency, he said.

Nakamura said that laser diodes could also function as smartphone-controlled projectors for displaying imagery or data on walls or floors nearby.

They could also boost wireless communications as the modulation speed of laser lighting is almost 1,000 times faster than LED lighting, he added.