August 2007 issue of Nature Photonics praised the research on microdroplets which was conducted by Koç University's research team: Alphan Sennaroğlu, Alper Kiraz, Adnan Kurt, the faculty members of the Physics Department, and Levent Demirel, the faculty member of the Chemistry Department.

It is known that cavity-enhanced Raman scattering can occur in streams of microdroplets. However, the phenomenon is not so easy to achieve in a stationary microdroplets on a surface, owing to the difficulty in optimizing the surface characteristics and maintaining a sufficiently high Q factor. However, by placing a glycerol-water droplet on a superhydrophobic surface coated with silica nanoparticles, the researchers have demonstrated what they believed is the first Raman lasing from stationary microdroplets.

By increasing the rate of convective cooling, our researchers showed the lasing performance can be improved.The team foresee that the system can be used as a light source for short-haul communications systems.