WORLD COMPUTER BREAKTHROUGH

UNSW engineers and scientists have announced a breakthrough in silicon technology that could revolutionise the global microchip and telecommunications industries.

A team led by Professor Martin Green, one of the world's leading photovoltaics engineers, has reversed the performance of a solar cell so that instead of using sunlight to generate electricity, the new device uses electricity to generate light.

This raises the probability that microchips will be able to send light signals directly to adjacent microchips, so avoiding costly circuitry and wiring that must presently be used to allow chips to communicate with each other.

The other members of the team are Drs Jianhua Zhao and Aihua Wang of the UNSW Photovoltaics Special Research Centre, and Professor Michael Gal and PhD student Peter Reece of UNSW's School of Physics.

The group will hold a news conference tomorrow at UNSW to coincide with the publication of their results in the leading international science journal Nature.

The UNSW group has used its expertise gained in about 25 years of intense research into how silicon performs under controlled conditions to combine two quantum physics processes inside silicon crystals. According to the Nature paper: "Each feature individually is shown to improve the emission efficiency [of light] by a factor of 10, which accounts for the improvement by a factor of 100 on the efficiency of baseline devices."

Professor Green is presently returning to Australia from a photovoltaics conference in the United States.

WHAT: Media conference on scientific breakthrough in computer, telecommunications technology
WHEN: 2 pm, Friday 24 August
WHERE: Photovoltaics Special Research Centre, Electrical Engineering Building, basement level. Enter UNSW by Gate 14, Barker St, off Anzac Parade, Kensington

CONTACT DETAILS: Rory McGuire, UNSW Faculty of Science, tel. 9385 2940 or 0413 930 728, Amanda Hainsworth, UNSW Public Affairs and Development, tel. 9385 2873, Professor Green's office, tel. 9385 4018.

Date issued: 23 August 2001