Semiconductor nanowire lasers are promising ultracompact light sources for miniaturized optical processing and sensing, but their efficiency is limited by the difficulty of confining light in a structure much smaller than its wavelength. By using a silicon photonic crystal to trap light in a semiconductor nanowire, researchers at NTT Basic Research Laboratories in Japan have now turned the chip itself to their advantage. They have shown that a photonic crystal/nanowire hybrid can sustain telecom-band lasing stable enough to transmit a high-frequency data signal (APL Photonics 2 46106), and believe that the platform’s advantages for component integration could enable them to build an on-chip photonic network……..
http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/68513
