"Until recently, all that speculation about the potential of silicon optics was hypothetical: suitable silicon lasers didn't exist. But things changed last winter when the lab of Intel scientist Mario Paniccia reported the first continuous all-silicon laser. Built using the same manufacturing methods that produce silicon chips, the experimental device turned out a steady stream of infrared photons, an achievement that many researchers had believed impossible in silicon.
It's still early days for silicon photonics. But the Intel result, which built on findings reported over the past year in a flurry of papers describing advances in silicon-based optical components, is convincing many experts that it could become practical to closely link optical and electronic technology at the computer level. The progress made by Paniccia's team has been remarkable, says Graham Reed, a silicon-photonics pioneer at the University of Surrey in England. "Now all of the skeptics are starting to believe that silicon will have a real impact on optics."
Anticipated advances in silicon technology will almost certainly keep Moore's Law going for the foreseeable future, creating ever faster computers. By speeding immense amounts of data into and out of chips and between machines, silicon photonics could help people access this vast computational power...
Paniccia's team came up with an answer that was both brilliant and, for those familiar with silicon technology, conceptually simple. Etched into the Intel laser chip was a silicon waveguide channel in which light bounced back and forth, gaining in intensity. The researchers implanted electrodes on both sides of the channel. When they turned on a voltage between the electrodes, it created an electric field that herded the negatively charged electrons toward the positively charged electrode, effectively sweeping them out of the way. As a result, the photons were able to build up unhampered, until they produced a continuous laser beam."
(Intel's Breakthrough)
