Qdots: they're not just for lighting up your antibodies any more

Get this; a company (spun-off from Fujitsu) has successfully made a green emitting laser using Quantum Dots. The company, called QD Laser, Inc. (how original) created a quantum dot semiconductor crystal that emits at 1064nm. A quick frequency doubling yields the 532nm laser line we all know and love. Now, they certainly aren't making this for the biomedical research crowd, but hey none of the tech we use today was developed for flow cytometry. It's the trickle down effect that gives us all the great gems. So, you're probably saying, who cares, a 532nm laser, we have a ton of them. Well, besides this being made from a Qdot, it also is super low-power consuming, and it is tiny; see the pic below. QD Laser envisions these lasers along with already available red and blue lasers as the projection source of an RGB miniature projector that can be embedded in smartphones. However, I'm envisioning these lasers on my handheld cytometer.