Red Lasers and Foldable Chips from Hitachi

IBM seems to get the lion's share of glory in developing new technologies , but many other companies boast extremely productive R&D departments. Hitachi is definitely among the innovators, judging by two announcements the company made this week. The first is the "MARU Beam" series of red laser diodes, which produce a nearly circular light beam with an aspect ratio (beam height/beam width) of 1.2. Compared to devices with elliptical light beams, the new laser diodes make it possible to simplify the beam-forming mechanism in laser levelers, line markers, and other products. The first MARU Beam products are five-milliwatt (mW) laser sources with the HL6335G series (9-millimeter package) and the HL6340MG series (5.6-millimeter package). The diodes in both series provide an operating current for a 5-mW output at twenty-five milliamps (mA). In portable products, Hitachi figures that this increased efficiency should help extend battery life. Anode-common and cathode-common versions are available in both device series. Probably more interesting to most folks is Hitachi's new integrated circuit that is slim enough to embed in paper. According to the Wall Street Journal , the chip is thinner than a strand of hair and won't break even if the paper it's embedded in is folded. Data stored on it can be accessed with a device resembling a bar code reader, but the chip itself can store more identification numbers than bar codes. The chip has a manufacturing cost of about $0.08 to $0.16 and Hitachi says it thinks the little fella will bring in annual revenues of $145.4 million by fiscal 2005.