Frikkin lasers

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Did anyone listen to the Life Scientific with Alf Adams ? Great story about his work on strained quantum well lasers. Amazing the impact they have on our everyday lives yet he made no money from it and is virtually unknown outside his scientific community.

Anyway, does anyone know if the same effect is used in solar cells ? If it can greatly increase the power and efficiency of semiconductor lasers ( electricity to light ) then does it work in reverse ( light to electricity ) ? Just wondering .....

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Halmyre said:

No, because sunlight has such a broad spectrum. By it's nature a quantum well detector would work at a very precise wavelength but then you wouldn't get much out of it, and most of the examples out there work in the infra-red only.

Thanks, I'll rip up that patent form then

Chatting to the missus about this last night - turns out Alf Adams is one of her friend's dad !! What a small world it is.