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IPFS News Link • Science, Medicine and Technology

Growing nanowire lasers directly on silicon promises to simplify photonic chip design

• http://www.gizmag.com, David Szondy

But as electronics grow smaller and smaller, fundamental physical barriers loom ahead. To help stave off that day, a team of physicists at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) is working on nanowire lasers that are a thousand times thinner than a human hair and may one day lead to economical, high-performance photonic circuits.

According to Professor Jonathan Finley, Director of the Walter Schottky Institute at TUM, conventional electronics are entering a state of diminishing returns as it becomes more difficult to create ever tinier microcircuitry. One way to prevent this is by taking a lateral step and replacing the electrons with beams of light in what's known as photonics.

So far, creating silicon-based photonics chips has shown promise, but the need for an external laser source to power them is an inelegant design that complicates fabrication and limits miniaturization. In search of an alternative, a team led by Finley and Gregor Koblmüller has taken a page from previous micro-engineers by building the lasers directly on the chips in the same way that transistors and other components are today.


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