Application of Blue Diode Lasers to Printing

The availability of blue diode lasers would have a significant impact on several printing applications. The laser printing market is moving towards higher resolutions and higher print speeds. The optical systems for polygon scanner laser printers are diffraction limited and therefore to improve the optical resolution it is very advantageous to reduce the wavelength of the scanning laser beam from that of the IR or red lasers currently being used. The other printing application of blue lasers is exposure of film, an area where argon ion lasers are currently being used. Replacement of these by diode lasers would potentially lower system costs. In this paper, the applications of blue lasers to printing will be outlined and the technical requirements that the lasers will need to satisfy will be discussed.