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First Room-Temperature Germanium Laser Completed
eldavojohn writes "MIT researchers have built and demonstrated the first room-temperature germanium laser that can produce light at wavelengths suited for communication. This achievement has two parts: '[U]nlike the materials typically used in lasers, germanium is easy to incorporate into existing processes for manufacturing silicon chips. So the result could prove an important step toward computers that move data — and maybe even perform calculations — using light instead of electricity. But more fundamentally, the researchers have shown that, contrary to prior belief, a class of materials called indirect-band-gap semiconductors can yield practical lasers.' While these are only the initial steps in what may become optical computing devices, the article paints it as very promising. The painful details will be published in the journal Optics Letters."
Shouldn't Berlin University be the one using the Germanium?
MIT should have made their laser out of Americium.
And it sucks to be Cambridge. There is no such thing as Englandium.
What? No, I don't have anything sensible to say about this story. And anyway, at first I thought it said geranium, and my comment was going to be even stupider than this one.
I am anarch of all I survey.