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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • cyd@lemmy.worldtoTechnology@lemmy.worldThe Tiny Ultrabright Laser that Can Melt Steel
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    7 months ago

    This is a really neat technology that Noda (the author of the article) has been plugging away at for decades. The main problem, from my understanding, is that people haven’t been able to find applications.

    We already have conventional laser diodes that work extremely well, they’re not that bright but bright enough to make laser pointers, disc read/write heads, etc., which are applications where miniaturization is important.

    On the other hand, in industrial applications like cutting steel, we have fiber lasers. Those are about the size of a briefcase, compared to the photonic crystal lasers in this article which about a centimeter. But they can reach incredible brightness, about 1000x the output power of the photonic crystal lasers (and about 1,000,000 times that of ordinary laser diodes). And in industrial applications you don’t really need the laser to be miniaturized (especially since the power source itself will be a chonky piece of equipment).

    So somehow, right now this neat tech is falling into the cracks. One day, I’m sure someone will find the perfect application for it, though.

    Edit: the potential application that people are most hopeful about is lidar; if, in the future, lidar gets integrated into consumer electronic devices like cellphones, then photonic crystal lasers will probably prove their usefulness.











  • Here’s the story as I understand it. US automakers want to make expensive premium cars because those sell for high margins. The big breakthrough in the EV market over the past few years has been China EV makers figuring out how to make cheap and “good-enough” EVs, which are catching on in many places across the world. This is clearly the direction in which the market has to move (whether via Chinese or non-Chinese automakers) to spur mass EV adoption. In the US, however, the established automakers can rely on protectionism to block imports, this keeping the US market limited to big expensive cars that remain using ICEs.


  • These complaints about EVs being too expensive are way out of date, now that China is pumping out hordes of cheap EVs that consumers like.

    Even if the US doesn’t want to let in Chinese auto imports, the question remains: why are Chinese automakers able to bring down prices, but not US automakers? You can point to Chinese government subsidies, but the US also does industrial policy these days. One of Biden’s favourite talking points is how much money his government is putting into supporting US green manufacturing through the IRA.