Reddit discussion with the author is pretty good [1]. The author tries to dispel some of the superlatives in the public statements about the work, and provides good detail about what they've done: a novel way to produce a single material ("nanosheet") that when pumped, emits at multiple (three gets you white light, and what they did here) wavelengths.
> Actually, there are a few key points we wanted to make with this paper. First, yes this is semiconductor-based, which offers a few advantages over optical fiber technology. The second is that this was accomplished in a single growth run, unlike several other devices we cite which essentially just run multiple lasers in parallel. Third, the growth mechanism for these nanosheets is novel. Also, as far as we could tell, we provided the first direct evidence for the nanobelt-nanosheet conversion mechanism. It had been previously proposed before in a single paper, but did not have any experimental evidence to back up the claim.
> Also, the linked article is somewhat sloppy. We are by no means reporting the first ever white laser, and in fact we cite several examples of previous setups used to produce white lasing. In this paper we report the first monolithic, semiconductor-based laser.
That's why I love Hacker News and some subreddits. Whenever there's an interesting story in the news, it's usually full of misinterpretations and sometimes outright lies. But on their HN/Reddit discussion threads you can often meet people who are either directly involved in the project or know someone who is first-hand, who can cut through the bullshit and say how things actually are.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3f0oyo/the_first_w...
> Actually, there are a few key points we wanted to make with this paper. First, yes this is semiconductor-based, which offers a few advantages over optical fiber technology. The second is that this was accomplished in a single growth run, unlike several other devices we cite which essentially just run multiple lasers in parallel. Third, the growth mechanism for these nanosheets is novel. Also, as far as we could tell, we provided the first direct evidence for the nanobelt-nanosheet conversion mechanism. It had been previously proposed before in a single paper, but did not have any experimental evidence to back up the claim.
> Also, the linked article is somewhat sloppy. We are by no means reporting the first ever white laser, and in fact we cite several examples of previous setups used to produce white lasing. In this paper we report the first monolithic, semiconductor-based laser.