APIC Corporation: successfully created a germanium laser

APIC Corp. (Culver City, Calif.), a supplier of photonic ICs to the U.S. military, has announced that a research team under the leadership of APIC chairman and CEO Birendra "Raj" Dutt, has succeeded in getting germanium to act as a laser.
This opens up the prospect of using germanium as an on-chip light source for a future generation of silicon-based photonic ICs, the company said. Allowing circuits to use light instead of electrons could result in higher performance ICs that consume less power, the company added.
The team succeeded in making germanium produce a laser when electrically pumped. Using this technology, called FLIP (Fully Laser Integrated Photonics), APIC hopes to develop photonic microprocessors, doping germanium in silicon wafer. Photons from the induced germanium laser..............
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