The high crystal quality of III-V nanoneedles grown on silicon are enabling development of practical silicon-based optoelectronics .
Here is what my EETimes story says about integrated silicon optics: Scientists have long been interested in integrating lasers onto silicon to enable on-chip communications using light instead of electrons, which would lead to faster communication and increased bandwidth. But, unfortunately, there is a lattice mismatch between silicon and the traditional III-V materials used to craft semiconductor lasers. Now, researchers at the University of California at Berkeley claim to have surmounted that obstacle by growing indium-gallium-arsenide nano-pillars vertically. The researchers claim their technique is adaptable to mass production of robust on-chip structures for optical interconnects, field emitters, nonlinear optical signal generation, sensors, solar cells, displays and nano-fluidics...
Full Text: http://bit.ly/NextGenLog-eCcz
