A fragile crystal laser in Vilnius just survived 400 million pulses

Perovskites are wonder materials — cheap to make, brilliant at handling light — with one fatal habit: they fall apart in moist air. That fragility has kept them in the lab for years. At Vilnius University in Lithuania, doctoral researcher Abdul Mannan Majeed and Dr Patrik Ščajev tried swapping part of the lead in the crystal for zinc. The result, reported in Advanced Optical Materials: laser structures that kept performing steadily through more than 400 million pulses, with a clean, narrow beam. It is one careful step — measurements took weeks — toward perovskite lasers, solar cells and electronics that can survive the real world.

SDG 9 · Industry, innovation and infrastructure — Mechanism: tech innovation