What is it about?
Nanoscale lasers, thinner than a human hair, have great potential as building blocks for computer chips which use light rather than electricity. Nanowire lasers have been shown to be highly promising, because billions can be made in a single growth step - however, this growth often means they have varied quality. In this work, we show a method to select and build more uniform systems using these nanowire lasers, using two novel techniques - high-speed testing to identify the best lasers, and high-precision assembly to pick and place the selected lasers.
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Photo by Victor Aznabaev on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Nanowire lasers have been long promised to work in next-generation light-based computing, however, the spread in performance has slowed progress in this area. Our findings show that useful systems with up to 25 lasers with similar behaviour can be built by selecting nanowires and picking and placing them - this opens a new opportunity to explore integrated photonic systems.
Perspectives
This publication is a first collaboration between the Strathclyde, Manchester and ANU groups. By combining the precision manufacturing approach in Strathclyde with the high-throughput characterisation at Manchester and high-quality nanowire growth at ANU, this was a great example of synergistic work.
Dr Patrick Parkinson
University of Manchester
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Characterization, Selection, and Microassembly of Nanowire Laser Systems, Nano Letters, February 2020, American Chemical Society (ACS),
DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.9b05078.
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