Nanolasers grown on silicon chips
HollyMinkowski
Posts: 1,398
Real progress is being made in the search for a method to add lasers to silicon
chips that even the severely limited chip fabs we have today may be able to handle.
This is really important because you
come up against a data speed limit using copper that is quite limiting. Until we have
chip fab by direct molecular manipulation this may be the only way to add good optical
ability to a silicon chip, and speaking of silicon it will be a great day when we move away
from leaky silicon to something better (graphene?). This is required to go smaller, faster, and cooler.
chips that even the severely limited chip fabs we have today may be able to handle.
http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/32324/?a=fChang-Hasnain says that her process could eventually be used to grow high-quality lasers on otherwise finished silicon chips patterned with transistors and optical components, giving them the capability of encoding data into pulses of light.
This is really important because you
come up against a data speed limit using copper that is quite limiting. Until we have
chip fab by direct molecular manipulation this may be the only way to add good optical
ability to a silicon chip, and speaking of silicon it will be a great day when we move away
from leaky silicon to something better (graphene?). This is required to go smaller, faster, and cooler.