Anyone buying a laptop in the past ten years may have noticed something: microprocessor performance isn’t making the huge advances in ‘clock speed’ that it used to.
In fact, there’s been very little increase microprocessor core speeds in the last decade, and the reason is straightforward; despite huge advances in silicon technology over the years, electrical circuits carrying information around a computer system simply can’t keep up. If the core processors were to keep increasing their speed, the circuits would melt.
Technology
The answer could be “optical interconnects” - a technology which guides light in silicon to carry the information around a computer system. This type of interconnection is already carrying most of our internet traffic and now major computer manufacturers are seeing it as the future of faster computing.
But there’s a problem - silicon doesn’t emit light very well so where will this light come from? Current technology uses lasers mounted onto silicon circuits but there is no fully integrated solution available yet.
Thomas Krauss, Professor of Photonics in our School of Physics, Engineering and Technology, is part of a team of researchers working to create a device which will solve this problem and potentially restart the speed race, while opening up new applications and commercial opportunities.
Speeds
He believes optical interconnects could hold the key to greater computing speeds. “The reason these optical connections, or silicon photonics, are so well suited to data communications is because of their excellent compatibility with the existing circuitry, which uses metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology,” he says. “But despite making progress with many essential computer components, integrating laser sources with silicon remains challenging.”
So given silicon’s poor light emitting capabilities, the team set about looking at other materials which could give laser-like performance, while remaining ‘CMOS-compatible’. And their findings have now been published.
Professor Krauss says: “We’ve demonstrated a light emitter on silicon using one of the new classes of graphene-like 2D materials to provide the optical gain. The particular significance is that it’s the first time this has been done in the crucial fibre-optic communications band - known as the ‘O-band’ - and it’s this step-change which is so exciting. It opens up this device to a range of real applications and commercial opportunities.”
Scalable
Dr Yue Wang from our School of Physics, Engineering and Technology also worked on the project. She explains why the findings have such potential: “The ability to use this material opens new opportunities for deploying current manufacturing methods, and thereby brings ‘2D-on-silicon’ devices a step closer to becoming a scalable technology”.
The text of this article is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. You're free to republish it, as long as you link back to this page and credit us.
