BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Illinois Wesleyan University senior Dan Haeger spent a ten-week summer internship at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) investigating various ways to manufacture blue lasers so that their products can be more consumer friendly. Blue laser devices are being developed by researchers as the next step in cutting-edge electronics, with the hopes of replacing red laser products such as DVD players.“We’re trying to make a certain generation of electronics cheaper and more affordable for the public,” says Haeger, a physics and economics double-major from Wheaton, Ill.
According to Haeger, blue lasers provide the latest advances in technology, but they are more expensive to manufacture than red lasers. Blue lasers currently cost around $200-$300 to produce, while the price of red lasers is drastically lower at $0.99. Prior to the mid 1990s, popular electronics such as DVD players, laser printers and medical equipment commonly used red lasers because of their availability. Over the past five years, however, red laser products have been replaced by blue laser technologies to provide consumers with higher sound and image quality with more storage capacity.