THE innards of next-generation optical computers could be manufactured inside microbes, following the first-ever successful attempt to grow semiconductor nanocrystals inside bacteria.
Bacteria could eventually be used to make devices such as transistors or light-emitting diodes only a few nanometres across, say the researchers who achieved this feat.
Such tiny LEDs will be needed to generate light in the planned ultra-fast microchips that will use optical rather than electrical signals to process data. Controlling the shape, size and crystal structure of the LEDs is crucial because, at these scales, quantum-physical effects come into play. These effects can subtly alter the…
