MIT has created a tiny LED that can be integrated into a chip
August 26, 2021
One challenge facing LED production is the difficulty of making them out of silicon, which means the sensor has to be made separately from the device it is embedded in.That could change with a breakthrough at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Electronics Research Laboratory.In the lab, researchers were able to create a silicon chip that fully integrates LED.
These LED are bright enough to enable state-of-the-art sensor and communications technology.The MIT findings could lead to simpler manufacturing and improved performance for nanoscale electronics.In general, silicon makes light sources less effective.To solve this problem, electrical engineers often make LED from other materials.Silicon-based LED researchers have focused on solving the problem with specially designed junctions, which are contacts between different areas of the diode to improve brightness.The technology improves efficiency, allowing leds to operate at low voltages while generating enough light to transmit signals over a five-meter long fiber-optic cable.
