Scientists have developed a relatively simple, robust and versatile process for growing crystals made from compound semiconductor materials that will allow them be integrated onto silicon wafers — an important step toward making future computer chips that will allow integrated circuits to continue shrinking in size and cost even as they increase in performance.

hysicists have experimentally demonstrated the feasibility of designing an optical analog of a transistor based on a single silicon nanoparticle. Because transistors are some of the most fundamental components of computing circuits, the results of the study have crucial importance for the development of optical computers, where transistors must be very small and ultrafast at the same time.

A surprising discovery has been made about hybrid organic/inorganic solar cells. Contrary to expectations, a diode composed of the conductive organic PEDOT:PSS and an n-type silicon absorber material behaves more like a pn junction between two semiconductors than like a metal-semiconductor contact (Schottky diode).

By encoding information in photons via their spin, ‘photonic’ computers could be orders of magnitude faster and efficient than their current-day counterparts. Likewise, encoding information in the spin of electrons, rather than just their quantity, could make ‘spintronic’ computers with similar advantages. Engineers and physicists have now discovered a property of silicon that combines aspects of all of these desirable qualities.

In a breakthrough for nanoscience, polymer engineers have made such a mold for nanostructures that can shape liquid silicon out of an organic polymer material. This paves the way for perfect, 3-D, single crystal nanostructures.

A new approach for better integrating medical devices with biological systems has been developed by scientists with the first skeleton-like silicon spicules ever prepared via chemical processes.

Electronic computing speeds are brushing up against limits imposed by the laws of physics. Photonic computing, where photons replace comparatively slow electrons in representing information, could surpass those limitations, but the components of such computers require semiconductors that can emit light. Now, new research has enabled “bulk” silicon to emit broad-spectrum, visible light for the first time, opening the possibility of using the element in devices that have both electronic and photonic components.