Russian scientists managed to "make friends" of light with silicon, bringing the era of new generation microelectronics one step closer
A group of Russian physicists have developed a new method for producing powerful photon sources on silicon. In the future, this discovery may make it possible to reorient the operation of chips from current to photons, while the speed of operation of such circuits will become equal to the "light" speed with absolutely minimal heating of the chips.
Silicon and its refinement
As you know, under standard conditions silicon (currently the main material for the production of chips and semiconductors) absorbs and emits photons rather reluctantly.
At the same time, in modern products, the density of the arrangement of elements in the crystal is so high that the heat released during the passage of current in the operating time of the chips already quite seriously interferes with the increase in the performance of the microcircuits, and also provokes a bunch of other related problems.
Therefore, the transition to the transmission of data streams using photons is quite capable of fundamentally solving this problem, but no one has yet proposed acceptable technological solutions in that direction.
Russian scientists, on the other hand, managed to "make friends" between silicon and photons, and this is how they did it.
Successful experiment of scientists
The engineers decided to introduce germanium nanodots into the silicon structure and, most importantly, the engineers also managed to create a special photonic crystal directly on the silicon surface.
The original idea was that a photonic crystal would form a resonator near a nanodot and thus act multiple amplifier of the flux of photons emitted by this very point, and this should be quite enough for the functioning electronic circuits.
According to a press release on the Skoltech portal, the idea of interconnected states in a continuum was taken from quantum mechanics.
In this case, the confinement of photons in the region of the resonator is possible due to the fact that the symmetry of the electromagnetic field in the resonator itself does not coincide with the symmetry of the electromagnetic waves of the external space.
So, in the course of a further experiment, scientists have achieved an increase in the intensity of the glow almost a hundred times, and this opens up one of the possible ways to move to CMOS compatible optoelectronic circuits.
The scientists shared the results of the experiment on the pages of the Laser and Photonics Reviews portal.
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