Semiconductor lasers could someday be used to shuttle light
around chips instead of electrons, but not until they are shrunk
to the nanoscale. Now researchers think they may have found the
key--confining light in waveguides smaller than their own
wavelength then linking them to electron waves called plasmons.
Look for electronic chips with integrated optics within five
years. R.C.J. What is being billed as the world's smallest
semiconductor laser boasts a 5-nm active region that is 20 times
smaller than the wavelength of the light it emits. The key to
scaling down the laser to the nanometer level was harnessing the
interaction between light and surface plasmon waves. Last month,
experimental laser collaborators at Cornell University, Norfolk
State University and Purdue University performed an alternative
nanoscale laser demonstration, but their device was not
integrated onto a chip like the current device being
demonstrated by the University of California at Berkeley.
Discrete semiconductor lasers used in tel