<p>British researchers have built the world's most powerful terahertz laser chip, an advance that may enable improved security scanning and medical imaging.<br /><br /></p>.<p>Researchers from the University of Leeds claimed to have exceeded a 1 Watt output power from a quantum cascade terahertz laser. The new record more than doubles landmarks set by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and subsequently by a team from Vienna last year.<br /><br />Terahertz waves, which lie in the part of the electromagnetic spectrum between infrared and microwaves, can penetrate materials that block visible light and have a wide range of possible uses including chemical analysis, security scanning, medical imaging, and telecommunications.<br /><br />Potential applications include monitoring pharmaceutical products, the remote sensing of chemical signatures of explosives in unopened envelopes, and the non-invasive detection of cancers in the human body.<br /><br />However, one of the main challenges for scientists and engineers is making the lasers powerful and compact enough to be useful.<br /><br />"Although it is possible to build large instruments that generate powerful beams of terahertz radiation, these instruments are only useful for a limited set of applications," said Edmund Linfield, Professor of Terahertz Electronics in the University's School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering.<br /><br />"We need terahertz lasers that not only offer high power but are also portable and low cost," Linfield said. The quantum cascade terahertz lasers being developed by Leeds are only a few square millimetres in size.<br /><br />In October 2013, Vienna University of Technology announced that its researchers had smashed the world record output power for quantum cascade terahertz lasers previously held by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).<br /><br />The Austrian team reported an output of 0.47 Watt from a single laser facet, nearly double the output power reported by the MIT team. The Leeds group has now achieved an output of more than 1 Watt from a single laser facet.<br /><br />The research was published in the Institution of Engineering and Technology's (IET) journal Electronics Letters.</p>
<p>British researchers have built the world's most powerful terahertz laser chip, an advance that may enable improved security scanning and medical imaging.<br /><br /></p>.<p>Researchers from the University of Leeds claimed to have exceeded a 1 Watt output power from a quantum cascade terahertz laser. The new record more than doubles landmarks set by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and subsequently by a team from Vienna last year.<br /><br />Terahertz waves, which lie in the part of the electromagnetic spectrum between infrared and microwaves, can penetrate materials that block visible light and have a wide range of possible uses including chemical analysis, security scanning, medical imaging, and telecommunications.<br /><br />Potential applications include monitoring pharmaceutical products, the remote sensing of chemical signatures of explosives in unopened envelopes, and the non-invasive detection of cancers in the human body.<br /><br />However, one of the main challenges for scientists and engineers is making the lasers powerful and compact enough to be useful.<br /><br />"Although it is possible to build large instruments that generate powerful beams of terahertz radiation, these instruments are only useful for a limited set of applications," said Edmund Linfield, Professor of Terahertz Electronics in the University's School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering.<br /><br />"We need terahertz lasers that not only offer high power but are also portable and low cost," Linfield said. The quantum cascade terahertz lasers being developed by Leeds are only a few square millimetres in size.<br /><br />In October 2013, Vienna University of Technology announced that its researchers had smashed the world record output power for quantum cascade terahertz lasers previously held by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).<br /><br />The Austrian team reported an output of 0.47 Watt from a single laser facet, nearly double the output power reported by the MIT team. The Leeds group has now achieved an output of more than 1 Watt from a single laser facet.<br /><br />The research was published in the Institution of Engineering and Technology's (IET) journal Electronics Letters.</p>