First Room-Temperature Germanium Laser Completed 80
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."
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Make mine from Ruritanium (Score:4, Insightful)
It does suck for the English, they could use Europium but the best I could find was Rhodium, meaning rose. The next best is Rutherfordium for Ernest Rutherford as he was a British citizen but was born a New Zealander.
Hell even Ytterby a Swedish village has two elements named after it (Ytterbium and Yttrium).
A few more but by no means an exhaustive list.
Re:Make mine from Ruritanium (Score:1, Insightful)
Actually, Ytterby has four elements named after it: Ytterbium, Yttrium, Terbium and Erbium.
Communication wavelength (Score:1, Insightful)
Oh dear. So many replies, so much nonsense. Slashdot these days...
This is a great achievement.
What is great about this laser is that they seem to have found a new
material system that emits at communication wavelength. Communication
wavelength are important because this is a wavelength you can couple well
into optical fibers.
What they seem to do is they apply tensile strain to a germanium layer and
basically push it's energy bands from indirect semiconductor to direct
semiconductor. Direct semiconductors can amplify light, therefore you can
build a laser with them.
Now if you can take this stuff and grow bragg mirrors below and above, you
have something interesting.
Current semiconductor lasers for communication wavelength use nasty
material systems. For fiber optics coupling, you want surface emitting
lasers. Those are right now incredibly hard to manufacture with the
materials we had until now (Think producing two separate wafers and
then joining them mechanically). So we couldn't use them. That may have
changed.
To sum it up: Faster internet.
Re:Make mine from Ruritanium (Score:3, Insightful)