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JiminyDickish t1_j7frq12 wrote

Reply to comment by ellipsis31 in Why are green and red laser pointers so cheap and available, but yellow ones not so much? by SurprisedPotato

Additionally, the “yellow gap” is a thing that exists in semiconductor physics. We just don’t have a good junction diode with a band gap that produces photons around 580nm, which is that “banana yellow.” The way we solve that for LEDs is using phosphors, but that’s useless for producing coherent laser light.

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jns_reddit_already t1_j7gh3db wrote

And while green is typically doubled, I thought Nichia came up with the gallium nitride blue laser which is direct for low power lasers.

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pyrokay t1_j7gjju3 wrote

We have direct blue and direct green diodes now, 450nm and 520nm respectively.

Edit: the direct blues are 5+ watts per diode and the green is at about 1.4 watts per diode so not that low powered

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