Chennai: Researchers at Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, have generated laser from carrots, which will lead to advancements in research in optical spectroscopy and sensing, claimed reports on Monday.
“This finding by the IIT Madras team, a first of its kind development even globally, promises significant advancements in scientific and industrial research on optical spectroscopy and sensing,” said a press release.
According to reports, Professor C Vijayan and Assistant Professor Sivarama Krishnan from the Physics Department and a PhD scholar used a process first discovered by Nobel laureate C V Raman in this finding, and it is said to be bio-friendly, robust and reliable. It also had good linear response to temperature, added the release.
“In this case, a particular class of lasers called random lasers have been demonstrated in carrots where a Raman process plays a central role along with the cellulose network,” the release added.
The lasers were indispensable in a range of products and technologies, including communication, lithography, medicine, military operations, scientific research, engineering, displays, and data storage, it said.
Organic bio-pigments like carotenoids in carrots (which also contains cellulose fibres that contribute to multiple scattering of photons and resultant optical amplification) and porphyrins found in chlorophyll were optically active media because of their visible light absorption properties, said Assistant Professor Sivarama Krishnan.
“Although the fluorescence quantum yield of carotenoids is much less compared to standard organic laser dyes, the vibrational spectra can be obtained even with extremely low concentrations of carotenoids. The research team naturally chose carotenoid, as a possible lasing source,” he further added.