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Nature Photonics 2, 594 (1 October 2008) | doi:10.1038/nphoton.2008.190

Semiconductor lasers: Quantum wells meet nanowires

David Gevaux

Epitaxial growth techniques make it possible to control the thickness of semiconductor layers at the atomic level and create carefully designed quantum-well structures that trap electrons. Now, Fang Qian and colleagues from Harvard University and the Georgia Institute of Technology have combined such semiconductor quantum wells with another type of nanoscale structure that is at the heart of much research at present — the nanowire (Nature Mater.