For more than 150 years, spark plugs have powered internal combustion engines. Automakers are now one step closer to being able to replace this long-standing technology with laser igniters, which will enable cleaner, more efficient, and more economical vehicles.
Equally significant, the new laser system is made from ceramics, and could be produced inexpensively in large volumes, according to Takunori Taira of Japan's National Institutes of Natural Sciences. Heating the ceramic powders fuses them into optically transparent solids and embeds metal ions in them to tune their properties.
Taira’s team built its laser from two yttrium-aluminum-gallium (YAG) segments, one doped with neodymium, the other with chromium. They bonded the two sections together to form a powerful laser only 9 millimeters in diameter and 11 millimeters long (a bit less than half an inch). The composite generates two laser beams that can ignite fuel in two separate locations at the same time.
Also: Learn about nonlinear combustion instability.
