Microscopic Color Converters May Yield Small Laser-Based Devices

New research suggests that laser-based devices are poised to become a lot smaller. Researchers at Columbia University and Politecnico di Milano studied a 2D material called molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) and characterized how efficiently devices built from stacks of MoS2 less than one micron thick — 100 times thinner than a human hair — convert light frequencies at telecom wavelengths to produce different colors.