Nanoscale Crystals May Be The Future of Silicon

Wire Tap writes: "With all the talk about how silicon is nearing its physical limits in computer systems, and other data processing applications, I found this article quite interesting. "[Brian] Korgel and chemical engineering professor Keith Johnston have found a method to make stable microscopic nanocrystals out of silicon that can emit light. And by toying with the size of the silicon nanostructures, they can change the color of the light that shines through. It can make essentially faster memory and generate less heat and radiate less power.""

Comments

Re:Better notebook screens

[atrowe]

This technology isn't currently suited for display applications. The cost of production is still too high so that it would be highly cost prohibitive to produce a 15 inch laptop display.

My company (which shall remain unnamed) has been working on this technology for processing and routing applications. It isn't intended to replace LCD displays, but to replace traditional silicon processors.

Light processors have been in the planning and development stages for years now, and once the technology is perfected, will offer lower power consumption and less heat production as opposed to the standard silicon-on-insulator microprocessors that are in use today. The light emitting properties of these chips could also be used in optical routers and fiber switching/repeating applications, however we have yet to overcome the problem of interfacing the dylithium crystal matrix with the carbon nanotube fibres used in high speed optical cable. Hopefully the new flux capacitors in development at IBM's "Deep Space Nine" research facility in Oregon will solve this problem nicely, but it looks like these advancements are still several years off.