Researchers at the University of California at Santa Barbara have developed an erbium-antimony semiconductor of nearly perfect quality with embedded nanostructures containing ordered lines of atoms that can manipulate light energy in the mid-infrared range. When light (in this case, infrared) hits the surface of this semiconductor, electrons in the nanostructures begin to resonate, preserving the optical information, but shrinking it to a scale that would be compatible with electronic devices.
Key to this technology is the use of erbium, a rare earth metal that has the ability to absorb light in the visible as well as infrared wavelength , and has been used for years to enhance the performance of silicon in the production of fiber optics. Pairing erbium with the element antimony (Sb), the researchers embedded the resulting compound — erbium antimonide (ErSb) — as semimetallic nanostructures within the semiconducting matrix of gallium antimonide (GaSb).
ErSb is an ideal material to match with GaSb because of its structural compatibility with surrounding material, allowing the researchers to embed the nanostructures without interrupting the atomic lattice structure of the semiconducting matrix. The less flawed the crystal lattice structure of a semiconductor is, the more reliable and better performing the device in which it is used will be.
The nanostructures allow the compound semiconductor to absorb a wider spectrum of light due to a Optics and electronics operate on vastly different scales, with electron confinement being possible in spaces far smaller than light waves. Therefore, it has been an ongoing challenge for engineers to create a circuit that can take advantage of the speed and data capacity of photons and the compactness of electronics for information processing.
