Transistor laser could change communications

摘要

Since their inception in 1947, transistors have been three-terminal devices with electrical inputs and electrical outputs. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have changed that. A team headed by professors Milton Feng and Nick Holonyak, Jr., has developed a transistor that emits light-enough to send data over fiber-optic links and across silicon wafers.rnTypical transistors emit a small number of photons, but not enough to be useful. The transistor laser adds a quantum well in the transistor's base structure, the P region of an NPN transistor. Tests have shown that the quantum well boosts optical signal intensity as much as 40 times.