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Scientists Build Three Atom Thick LEDs
minty3 tipped us to news that UW researchers have built the thinnest LEDs yet: a mere three atoms thick. Quoting El Reg: "Team leader Xiaodong Xu, a UW assistant professor in physics and materials science and engineering, and his graduate student Ross, have published the technique in the latest issue of Nature Nanotechnology. They report that the LEDs are small and powerful enough to be used in optical chips that use light instead of electricity to shuttle signals and data through a processor, or they could be stacked to make new thin and flexible displays."
When I see it!
Unfortunately, that means they have to be several kilometers in width...
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
And how many atoms thick does the insulating layer between adjacent photosensitive or photoemitting structures need to be to prevent light emitted by one pair's LED from unduly influencing the state of an adjacent photodiode/phototransistor?
What, exactly, is the benefit of building a chip whose internal connections are basically all optoisolators?
I'm impressed that they didn't just build one one atom thick LED, but three of them. Was it to prove they could reproduce it?
To be clear, only two authors are from the University of Washington. They have many collaborators, including from Univ. of Tennessee, Oak Ridge NL, Germany, Japan, and Hong Kong.
Submitter: University of Wisconsin and University of Waterloo are also known as "UW". It's worth expanding on first use.
boldly going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse