Intel claims silicon laser breakthrough

In a paper to be published Thursday in the journal Nature, Intel’s Photonics Technology Laboratory reported a way to overcome the primary hurdle to using silicon as a medium for laser light, an effect in which electrons freed by the energy of passing photons absorb the light as it passes through.

Researchers at the world’s largest maker of microchips overcame that problem — called two-photon absorption — by using a technique from the world of semiconductors: it created positive and negative regions around the path of the laser light, which “vacuum” away electrons and provide a clear road for the laser.

Combine that with the research going on with Extreme UV light and now I understand why Intel was so confident it could get through at least 2009 and possibly on to 2012 (perhaps past 32nm) without any problems. Not too shabby.