A team of researchers from the Scientific and Production Association in Uzbekistan have succeeded transforming sunlight into laser light in a fashion that outperforms all the other similar projects that had been doing the same thing in the past. The team brags a 35 percent efficiency, versus one of maximum 2 percent obtained by others.
Their discovery has been published in the AIP Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy as producing a laser device that concentrates light by using a small parabolic mirror 1 meter in diameter and that has the focal spot of about 2 to 3 centimeters in diameter.
The light reflected by the parabolic mirror then hits a two-layer ceramic disc known as a Neodymium and Chromium co-doped YAG (yttrium aluminum garnet) laser material, whose one of the sides would be highly reflective, and the other will do the opposite.
The electrons in the above-mentioned material would be excited by sunlight, and would emit a 1.06 micrometers laser light (infrared). A water-filled heat sink would then take the extra heat produced by the laser.
A final step is the process is that in which the laser thus obtained would travel to a prime focus and get reflected back to the ceramic surface and then exit the solar collector at an oblique angle. This step ensures a higher conversion efficiency than others’.
[via eurekalert]
