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Scientists grow nanolasers on silicon chips, prove microscopic blinkenlights are the future
What you see above may look like a nanoscale Obelisk of Light, ready to protect the tiny forces of Nod, but that's not it at all. It's a nanolaser, grown directly on a field of silicon by scientists at Berkeley. The idea is to rely on light to transmit data inside of computers, rather than physical connections, but until now finding a way to generate that light on a small enough scale to work inside circuitry without damaging it has been impossible. These indium gallium arsenide nanopillars could solve that, grown on and integrated within silicon without doing harm. Once embedded they emit light at a wavelength of 950nm, as shown in the video below. [Thanks, Paul]
World's first room-temperature semiconductor plasmon nanolaser created by Berkeley scientists
We're big proponents of the idea that everything is better with lasers, and a team of researchers at UC Berkeley has created a new type of semiconductor plasmon nanolaser, or spaser, that could eventually find a home in many of your favorite devices. The big breakthrough is that Berkeley's spaser operates at room temperature -- previous spasers could only sustain lasing at temperatures below -250° C -- enabling its use in commercial products. Plasmon lasers work by amplifying surface plasmons, which can be confined to a much smaller area than the light particles amplified by conventional lasers. This allows for extreme miniaturization of optical devices for ultra-high-resolution imaging, high sensitivity biological sensors, and optical circuits 100 times faster than the electronic variety. There's no word on how soon the technology will be commercially available, so you'll have to wait a bit longer for your first laser computer.
World's smallest laser cracks open the door to THz CPU race
So you thought 100nm was about as narrow as lasers could get, huh? Well think again brother, because scientists at Norfolk State University have now demonstrated a 44nm 'spaser' that performs a laser's functions by the alternative means of surface plasmons. By using such an unorthodox technique, the researchers have been able to overcome the minimum size limitation to lasers, and they even claim spasers could be made as small as 1nm in diameter. Peeking into the (not too near) future, this could improve magnetic data storage beyond its current physical limits, and even lead to the development of optical computers that "can operate at hundreds of terahertz" -- and here you were, thinking that your brand spanking new Core i7 system with Blu-ray was future-proof.
