Professor Tsai Paper Published in Virtual Journal

Chen Tsai, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering has had his article, "Stimulated Emission in a Nanostructured Silicon pn Junction Diode Using Current Injection," published in Applied Physics Letters 84, 2163 (2004), and the article has been selected for the March 29, 2004 issue of Virtual Journal of Nanoscale Science & Technology. The Virtual Journal, which is published by the American Institute of Physics and the American Physical Society in cooperation with numerous other societies and publishers, is an edited compilation of links to articles from participating publishers, covering a focused area of frontier research. Only a very small percentage of the published papers are selected for inclusion in the Virtual Journal. This paper can be access in the Virtual Journal at http://www.vjnano.org.

Professor Tsai has led the research on new and novel methods for making nano- structures in silicon that has resulted in the achievement, for the first time, of stimulated emission using current injection. Stimulated emission is the first essential step towards ultimate realization of silicon-based lasers. According to Professor Tsai, silicon (Si)- based integrated optoelectronic circuits which combine the prevalent microelectronics and the emerging photonics, when realized, would vastly expand the capabilities and applications in communication, signal processing, sensing, and computing systems. The key component towards this realization is an efficient light source, namely, Silicon-Based Lasers. Despite world-wide efforts for many years, Si-based lasers are yet to be realized due to the "indirect bandgap" of Si. Professor Tsai has been asked to deliver an invited paper on the subject at the forthcoming IEEE International Conference on Silicon-Based Photonics in September.