Slashdot Mirror
Silicon LED
Ian writes "Scientists at the University of Surrey have developed an LED made entirely from silicon. This is a different approach to optoelectonics which had previously concentrated on nanocrystals. Full report from Nature, also coverage from the BBC, stand back and watch the patents fly (although in this case they are much more deserved)."
> They're making pixels out of *transistors* now?
See TFT: Thin Film Transistor.
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
I wonder if this means they'll still drop the same voltate as a normal, red, led drops. It would be nice if they dropped say, hardly anything, and were cheap. Just because I want that night-rider led thing for my kick ass Hyundai. (Please, note the sarcasm there.)
-h-
11.0010010000111111011010101000100010000101101000
There's no such place as Surrey in America.
The 56K modems push up against the limits of the telephone voice network which has a maximum bandwidth designed to carry voice transmissions. There is no way to push more information through the voice telephone system than this bandwidth limitation of the system itself. (ok, there are ways of using multiple lines/circuits, but that is cheating...)
The various "DL" technologies do not use the telephone voice system in this way, and thus are not limited by this bottleneck. In fact, most of the "DL" systems have enough room to provide the bandwidth necessary for voice in addition to the larger amount provided for data - which is why you can talk on the phone and use your internet connection at the same time with only one line.
Display technology just keeps advancing at such a pace it reminds me of moore's law in the microprocessor world. First it was LEPs and now this.
... I don't know what's come over me.
No, if display technology kept up with Moore's law, we would all have sub £100 29" flat-panel monitors on our desks!
An amazing percentage of computer systems still use extremely old-tech monitors (maybe 99%?) I don't actually know anywhere (outside of dealing rooms or comms rooms) where people order modern-tech monitors rather than some so-big-it's-got-gravity cream-coloured monitor!
I also apologise for over use of the "-" char today
but it's a well known fact that the best engineers are imported from england.
For sure!
Why is it that the British like warm beer?
Because Lucas makes refrigerators.
Hmmm...
British Reliant. American Reliant. (Yeah, okay, it's actually a Canadian Reliant now living in Scotland.)
At least North American Reliants have 4 wheels. So there.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Do you have a very dumb bimbo girlfriend ?
Do you find yourself hiding her in the closet when your family comes around ?
Do you wish she could run Linux ?
Well now she can thanks to Fnarg
Introducing the MPU : Mammary Processing Unit. Thanks to silicone-based transistors, your blonde bimbo can now harness the power of Linux using the processing power found inside her breast implants. The benefits are limitless: human-powered text-to-speech engine, self-powered design, intuitive touch-sensitive GUI, and don't forget our revolutionary S.L.U.T. module (Super Lightweight Undressing Terminal). Never again will you want to call your girlfriend a dumb whore once she gets a dual P3-Xeon installed on her ribs. And best of all, the MPU is available in a wide variety of shapes and sizes to fit all your business needs.
Call 1-888-GOAT-SEX now for more information
Fnarg is an equal opportunity satire.
Yes I know Silicon and Silicone aren't the same.. but hey, someone's gotta laugh!
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Britain has everything America has plus we have and electricity aswell to run our new silicon LEDs with... :->
IANAEE, but it seems to me that this won't really help. Reading the Nature article reveals that creating these SLEDs (new acronym? Silicon LED?) requires doping the silicon with boron, then heating it to 1000 deg C.
* Split Infinity Music
The stated purpose of this invention is to ease the integration of optics and silicon-based electronics - ostensibly to allow chip designers to fabricate an LED directly on the same chip, without having to "scab" on a separate LED to talk to the optics.
Is this boron doping and superheating process really going to be compatible with general chip fabrication procedures? Maybe a real EE can answer that.
* ~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
After reading both the Nature and BBC articles, I'm not sure that they are really talking about opto-electonics, although it might be used for such.
Instead I think they may be using this to emit the energy loss of silicon circuits in the visible spectrum, rather than IR.
As we all probably know, today's CPU's run extremely hot, just look at all the comments about the new Apple titanium notebook. Getting rid of this excess as light instead would be an immense benefit. And would mean small faster CPU's without the need for a cyrogenic cooling system.
--
This space left intentionally blank.
The real benefit of this is that these silicon light emitters can fairly easily be fabbed in existing chip plants wthout requiring the 'start from scratch' of other optical computing tecnologies.
This technique should (according to the invetor) provide a way of building hybrid practical electronic/optical chips very soon. He particularly mentioned the clock distribution problem that /. had a big discussion on few days back as being one of the first applications he expects to see for this technology.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
If someone gets going a transparent cube with lots of transparent chips blinking very fast in different colors... well, all I can say is they will get a lot of free coverage in the next major films.
;-)
It's already been done in Blakes 7 (spectacular BBC TV sci-fi series from the 80s).
Computer was called Orac, and had a spectacularly cheesy pseudo-computer-generated voice!
To quote:
Orac was described by its creator, Ensor, as being beyond a simple computer but rather being a brain, a genius.
Sounds just like b1ll Gates describing Win2K
Although details like the reaction time of the optical effect are missing. In a world where many things are measured in nanoseconds, if these things react in millionths, for example, then this will limit the applications.
Interesting all the same.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I submitted this story too. More information from Yahoo(via Reuters). They mention how it works, something with dislocations, loop-flaws in the silicon. The press release from U-Surrey is here. Google also claims to have indexed their paper here but accesss is forbidden.
Planning to be moderated ± 1: Bad Pun.
I mean, they really miss the old times when they could represent computers with lots of blinking red lights!
If someone gets going a transparent cube with lots of transparent chips blinking very fast in different colors... well, all I can say is they will get a lot of free coverage in the next major films.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
"Flashing your tits" gets a whole new meaning :)
It's long been a rumour, but finally...
Silicon-based light forms!
Don't fight it son. Confess quickly! If you hold out too long you could jeopardise your credit rating.
Nor do I see this applying to flat-panel display technology, or electronic paper for that matter.
Then again, having been married for over 10 years, I know that I'm almost never right about anything.
The number of momentum states is (essentially) equal to the number of Si atoms in the crystal. So if you make a crystal with only a few atoms, you only get a few momentum states.
That may push the bands around so that you get a direct band gap,
OR
That may make it possible to get a significant carrier population in the zero-momentum state, even though that isn't the lowest energy state.