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30 SMT007 MAGAZINE I JUNE 2023 e combination of defined measurement protocols, consistent data representation, and interoperability removes most opportunities for casual greenwashing, where excuses—such as lack of knowledge of protocols and method- ologies—are removed. Any remaining green- washing is very likely to receive detailed scru- tiny. is makes enforcement easier and brings integrity to the data. erefore, there is oppor- tunity for the original intent to be satisfied, to wit, with measurable improvement when set against environmental targets. e notion of a global sustainability net- work may seem like nonsense and a fantasy. However, the growing need for sustainabil- ity throughout the industry is a given. Reman- ufacturing and recycling are set to become at least as important as original product manu- facturing itself and will require a secure infor- mation exchange and privacy. ese costs must be bearable, and benefits should far outweigh the costs, to make sustainability, well, sustain- able. I believe we will see some form of a GSN in the future. Our only choice is how we make that happen so that, rather than a burden, it is a benefit to society. SMT007 Michael Ford is the senior director of emerging industry strategy for Aegis Software. To read past columns, click here. An easy way of altering compact semiconductor lasers to make them more practical for illumination and holography has been demonstrated by KAUST scientists. Semiconductor technology allows for all ele- ments of a laser to be packed into a micrometer- scale device. This includes an optically active, light amplification region with a highly reflective mirror on each side. One such device is the vertical-cavity surface emitting laser, or VCSEL. VCSELs are advantageous because hundreds can be created and used on the same substrate at the same time. But the beam is prone to a speckle-like profile, which makes it unsuitable for applications such as lighting, holog- raphy, projection and displays. These require uni- form light in the plane perpendicular to the direc- tion of beam propagation. Alkhazragi and KAUST colleagues, together with co-workers from China, have shown that speckles can be reduced in laser light from VCSELs simply by changing the shape of the device to break the sym- metry of the cavity. This introduces chaotic behav- ior in the generated light and allows the emission of more modes. The team investigated VCSELs with a D-shaped cavity and compared it with those with the standard cylindrical, or O-shaped, geometry. They observed that the D-shaped devices exhib- ited substantially reduced coher- ence and a corresponding 60 percent increase in optical power, which is the maximum achiev- able. "Machine learning could help design cavities that further maxi- mize the number of modes, lower the coherence and thus reduce speckle density to below human perception," says Alkhazragi. (Source: KAUST) Reduced Speckle on the Horizon