This volume provides one of the first comprehensive reviews combining recent breakthroughs in blue/green semiconductor lasers based on II-VI materials and fundamentally important issues about the development and extension of these lasers to commercial applications. These lasers are on the cutting-edge of technology and could revolutionize areas such as optical information storage and color displays in the next few years.An important focus of this book is on the recent laboratory development of an entirely new class of diode lasers, based on a different family of semiconductor materials, which emit at much shorter wavelengths in the green and blue portion of the spectrum.These new and exciting developments in optoelectronics, which are still undergoing laboratory testing, have the potential of providing a major increase in storage capacity over current CD technology.Besides applications in high-density digital optical storage, other possible aplications for the compact blue-green lasers will be in areas ranging from flat panel displays to multicolor printing to medical diagnostics. - Details practical issues of the growth of laser structures by molecular beam epitaxy by pioneers in the industry - Explains how the barriers of doping and electrical contact were overcome by using wide bandgap II-VI semiconductors - Documents thirty years of research