EurekAlert April 9, 2020
The inability of photons to interact well with each other is a drawback in developing optical transistors. An international team of researchers (Russia, Iceland, UK) demonstrated a new efficient implementation, where photons couple to excitons in single-layer semiconductors. They created polaritons with the help of a laser, a waveguide, and an extremely thin molybdenum diselenide semiconductor layer trapping them in the system. Polaritons obtained in this way not only exist for relatively long periods of time, but also have extra high nonlinearity, meaning that they actively interact with each other. The work brings us closer to creating an optical transistor which could be integrated on a chip. As the nonlinearity is rather high, a powerful laser is not needed – a small red light source will suffice, which could also be integrated onto the chip…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Photons do not interact with each other well, which creates a big problem for microelectronics engineers… Credit: Department of Physics, ITMO University