It’s a double treat from a research team at the School of Engineering of Stanford. An ultrafast nanoscale LED (Light Emitting Diode) with superb energy efficiency. Capable of transmitting on-chip data at an incredible speed of 10 billion bits per sec, this might be a breakthrough in a world of laser-based systems. And all this after being 2000 times more energy-efficient.
Generally lasers are capable of transmitting large chunks of data at ultralow power. But this particular LED can be a game changer in the sense that this nanophotonic, single-mode LED can give the same performance but with much lower power consumption. This one is unique as it releases a single wavelength of light like a laser. The research team is made up of Jelena Vuckovic and Gary Shambat and they innovatively included tiny islands of indium arsenide in the core of the LED, which makes it generate light when electricity is passed through it. This, coupled with other similar tweaking in the LED, makes it consume very low power – something to the tune of 0.25 femto-joules per bit of data compared to 500 femto-joules in a laser device.
This LED is a huge improvement over the team’s previous device, which had similar capability but only at temperatures lower than 150 K. However, this one functions at room temperature and can very well be the way ahead for more advanced and faster future-generation computer processors and for on-chip data transfers. Way to go, Shambat and Vuckovic.
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