Nanocrystals as a route to Silicon Optics

Silicon chips have revolutionised the way we live our lives. Silicon is used in almost all electronic circuitry. However, there is one area of electronics that, at the moment, silicon cannnot be used to fill; that is in the emission of light. Silicon cannot normally emit light, but nearly all telecommunications and internet data transfer is currently done using light transmitted down fibre optics. So in everyones home signals are encoded by silicon and transmitted down wires to a station where other (expensive) components combine these signals and send light down fibres. If cheap silicon light emitters were available, the fibre optics could be brought into everyones homes and the data rate into and out of our homes would increase enormously. The applicants intend to collaborate with international research groups who are trying to make silicon emit light using tiny clumps of silicon called nanocrystals . These nanocrystals can emit light in the visible and can be made to emit in the infrared by adding erbium atoms to them. A number of techniques available in Manchester, Guildford and Japan will be applied to silicon chips made in Canada to understand the light emission and to try to make silicon chips that emit light. In addition we will work with the UK company Qinetiq to investigate other uses of the nanocrystals in sending coded messages down fibers.