Germanium Diodes Mean Progress Toward Silicon-Chip Lasers

David Orenstein writes "Teams at Stanford and MIT have each reported getting strong light signals from germanium-based diodes on silicon at room temperature. Engineers have long sought to do this because, with further refinement into lasers, such diodes would allow for optical interconnects on chips. Optical interconnects could operate much faster and with less power than electrical (metal) ones that are becoming bottlenecks on current chips."

Comments

Re:I thought they already existed

[MichaelSmith]

I know for sure that I used Germanium diodes before and I'm pretty sure Germanium-based LED's have been developed before. Dunno what the news is.

They seem to have improved on Germanium LEDs by doping them differently to the point where the can look into using photons to transmit information around a silicon chip in place of electrons. I imagine they will look into building light pipes out of silicon, ie, little optical fibres.

OT: somebody should teach ascribe how to use the title tag.

Re:I thought they already existed

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Germanium semiconductors are old news(in fact, I have this vague impression that they might have gotten germanium working in fairly common use earlier than silicon); but, according to TFA, germanium-based light emitters built into silicon structures under more or less reasonable production and operation conditions, is what is new. This isn't about discrete components; but about structures built into larger silicon ICs.

Re:Optics Express and Optics Letters

[mrt_2394871]

The Stanford team's abstract is at
http://www.opticsinfobase.org/oe/abstract.cfm?uri=oe-17-12-10019
and the full paper is downloadable there

The MIT abstract is at
http://www.opticsinfobase.org/ol/abstract.cfm?URI=ol-34-11-1738
but you have to pay to read the paper