Apr 15, 2013 |
Nanolaser advances promise improved electronics
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(Nanowerk News) Nanolasers could potentially provide the next big breakthrough to make computers and similar technologies operate faster and more reliably.
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Lasers can give electronic devices more firepower for processing and computing functions. So the more lasers you can pack into devices, the better – thus the advantage of using the extremely tiny nanoscale lasers.
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The drawback has been that the heat generated by the nanolasers made their use impractical. To counteract that heat required cooling – a lot of cooling – all the way down to more than 400 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.
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But recently, Arizona State University electrical engineer Cun-Zheng Ning and his research team announced progress in developing nanolasers capable of operating effectively at room temperature and with lower energy consumption – further opening the possibility of using them in consumer electronics.
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Ning is a professor in the School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering, one of ASU’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering.
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See the text and listen to the audio clip of the news report “ASU researchers develop tiny lasers to speed computing”
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