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ANU scientists Improve Tiny Lasers by Adding Impurities

This is Tim Burgess with a silicon wafer on which nanostructures are grown. Credit: Stuart Hay, ANU

This is Tim Burgess with a silicon wafer on which nanostructures are grown. Credit: Stuart Hay, ANU

This will help in development of low-cost biomedical sensors, quantum computing, and a faster internet. Researcher Tim Burgess added atoms of zinc to lasers 1/100 the diameter of a human hair and made of gallium arsenide – a material used extensively in smartphones and other electronic devices. The impurities led to a 100X improvement in the amount of light from the lasers.

“Normally you wouldn’t even bother looking for light from nanocrystals of gallium arsenide – we were initially adding zinc simply to improve the electrical conductivity,” said Mr Burgess, a PhD student, ANU. “It was only when I happened to check for light emission that I realised we were onto something.”

Gallium arsenide ...

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