Light-emitting diode emitted, so the attainment of high efficiency in blue LEDs was quickly followed by the development of the first white LED. In this device a :Ce (known as "YAG") cerium doped phosphor coating on the emitter absorbs some of the blue emission and produces yellow light through fluorescence. The combination of that yellow with remaining blue light appears white to the eye. However, using different phosphors (fluorescent materials) it also became possible to instead produce green and red light through fluorescence. The resulting mixture of red, green and blue is not only perceived by humans as white light but is
Laser diode frequency doubling of near-IR VECSEL emitters to produce blue and green light. External-cavity diode lasers are tunable lasers which use mainly double heterostructures diodes of the AlGaAs type. The first external-cavity diode lasers used intracavity etalons and simple tuning Littrow gratings. Other designs include gratings in grazing-incidence configuration and multiple-prism grating configurations. Laser diodes have the same reliability and failure issues as light emitting diodes. In addition they are subject to "catastrophic optical damage" (COD) when operated at higher power. Many of the advances in reliability of diode lasers in the last 20 years remain proprietary to their developers. The