Intel Claims Silicon Laser Breakthrough
Researchers from Intel Corp. have created the first continuous laser beam using silicon components, a development the chip maker called a major scientific breakthrough that could herald significant advances in communications and medicine.
Source: CNNIn a paper to be published Thursday in the journal Nature, Intel's Photonics Technology Laboratory reported a way to overcome the primary hurdle to using silicon as a medium for laser light, an effect in which electrons freed by the energy of passing photons absorb the light as it passes through.
Researchers at the world's largest maker of microchips overcame that problem -- called two-photon absorption -- by using a technique from the world of semiconductors: it created positive and negative regions around the path of the laser light, which "vacuum" away electrons and provide a clear road for the laser.
A continuous laser beam generated through silicon, which is transparent to infrared light, could overcome cost and size limitations in current lasers used in surgery and communications, which are made with more exotic and expensive materials, Intel said.
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