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Scientists create liquid light, get one step closer to spintronics
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Strange things go on when you push physics to extremes. Extending Moore’s Law to its physical conclusion, we run into problems like the traces in circuits being so small that electrons can quantum tunnel between them. But electrons aren’t the only thing we can use to carry data through circuits. Researchers from Cambridge University have created a semiconductor assembly that blurs the line between electricity and light, and they think we can commercialize it to make optical spintronics — using electron spin in electronics — a reality.
“We have made a field-effect light switch that can bridge the gap between optics and electronics,” says Dr. Hamid Ohadi, coauthor, from the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge. “We’re reaching the limits of how small we can make transistors, and electronics based on liquid light could be a way of increasing the power and efficiency of the electronics we rely on.”
It started when researchers caught a laser with a thin slice of semiconductor material in a tiny, mirrored microcavity. This arrangement forced the photons to interact with the semiconductor excitons (excited electrons, bound to the “hole” created when they become excited) and produce a superfluid made of half-light, half-matter chimera quasi-particles called polaritons.
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