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Silicon Chip with Integrated Laser: Light from a Nanowire: Nanolaser for information technology

Gallium-arsenide nanowires are on a silicon surface. Credit: Thomas Stettner/Philipp Zimmermann / TUM

Gallium-arsenide nanowires are on a silicon surface. Credit: Thomas Stettner/Philipp Zimmermann / TUM

Physicists at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have developed a nanolaser, a thousand times thinner than a human hair. Thanks to an ingenious process, the nanowire lasers grow right on a silicon chip, making it possible to produce high-performance photonic components cost-effectively. This will pave the way for fast and efficient data processing with light in the future. Ever smaller, ever faster, ever cheaper – since the start of the computer age the performance of processors has doubled on average every 18 months. 50 years ago already, Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore prognosticated this astonishing growth in performance. And Moore’s law seems to hold true to this day.

But the mi...

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