Esocid writes "Conventional electrically-powered laser diodes used in everyday customer goods like DVD players are currently based on inorganic semiconductor materials such as gallium arsenide, gallium nitride, and related alloys. Plastic laser diodes offer the promise of array more of the light electromagnetic spectrum than their counterparts, from near ultraviolet to the near infrared. Yet despite over a decade of fact-finding worldwide, plastic laser diodes have not yet been demonstrated because there haven't been any plastics that could sustain a large enough current while also supporting the productive light emission needed to produce a laser beam. Now researchers at Imperial College London, publishing their findings in Nature Materials in April, are opinion a plastic related to PFO (polydioctylfluorene), a blue-light emitting material; by making subtle changes in the plastic's chemical structure they have produced a substance that transports charges 200 times better than before, while indeed increasing its ability to emit light efficiently."

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