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Optoelectronics

Electronics lightens up

Nature Physics volume 4, pages 676–677 (2008)Cite this article

A demonstration of electronic operations on photons in an excitonic integrated circuit shows a possible route towards nanoscale optoelectronics.

Light is ideal for communications applications. It is fast and can, under the correct conditions, travel for large distances with very little scattering and absorption by the surrounding medium. The insensitivity to its environment, however, poses the question: how could light pulses be manipulated to make a photonic transistor? This question has remained largely unanswered and, so far, only cumbersome infrastructures have been developed for converting an electronic signal into a light signal and vice versa. Given the fundamental role communications have in our society, this is more than an academic challenge.

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Figure 1: Energy-band diagrams (energy versus position) for light–matter interaction in semiconductors.

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  1. Richard J. Warburton is in the Department of Physics, School of Engineering and Physical Sciences, Heriot-Watt University, Edingburgh EH14 4AS, UK. R.J.Warburton@hw.ac.uk,

    Richard J. Warburton

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  1. Richard J. Warburton
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Warburton, R. Electronics lightens up. Nature Phys 4, 676–677 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys1066

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