Phys.org  September 20, 2024 Photons do not carry sufficient momentum to induce indirect optical transitions in semiconducting materials, such as silicon, necessitating the assistance of lattice phonons to conserve momentum. Therefore, silicon is a less attractive material for a wide variety of optoelectronic applications. An international team of ranchers (Russia, Israel, USA – UC Irvine) introduced an alternative strategy to fulfill the momentum-matching requirement in indirect optical transitions. They demonstrated that when confined to scales below ∼3 nm, photons acquired sufficient momentum to allow electronic transitions at the band edge of Si without the assistance of a phonon. Confined photons […]