4. Research areas and long-term trends

Extending the emission wavelength range of semiconductor lasers is an important area of research. New structures emitting in the shallow UV (350 to 250 nm) would find numerous applications in biomedical instrumentation, in purification techniques and also in information storage to further increase the storage capacities of optical disks. Research into structures covering the near infrared (3 to 10 µm) is also aimed at developing new applications in gas analysis and detection, and in specific devices developed for military needs.

As we have already seen (§ 3.1