Scientists reckon they may have found a way of controlling quantum states for use in optoelectronic chips, by manipulating intersubband relaxation times of charge states in silicon-germanium (SiGe) structures on a picosecond scale.
A discovery, by a team from the Institute of Semiconductor and Solid State Physics at Austria's University of Linz, could be highly significant in terms of quantum computing and optoelectronics, examining how electronic devices interact with light on the visible and invisible spectrum.
While beaming information via light quanta - or photons for non boffins - isn't new, the process only currently works properly over long distances - like fibre optic cables - but not on a chip-to-chip basis, as silicon apparently has a tough time allowing the generation of photons conventionally.
The Austrian researchers use a quantum cascade laser, based on a silicon-germanium heterostructure, to let quantum-physical effects generate their own laser light in the infrared range.
"There are currently numerous fundamental issues that need to be clarified in terms of the way that SiGe heterostructures work and how they can be controlled," said DI Patrick Rauter, a boffin on Dr. Thomas Fromherz's team.
Rauter went on to explain that a big issue had been to work out how to control and extend intersubband relaxation times, the timeframe in which excited charge carriers of the SiGe stay at a high energy level before sinking back down to their original state.
Fromherz's team has now purportedly managed to measure the intersubband relaxation time and even artificially extend it.
"To do this, we applied an external electrical field to the sample. By altering this field, we were able to continuously tune the relaxation time between 12 and 25 picoseconds. In actual fact, we succeeded in doubling the relaxation time - a highly promising result," explained DI Rauter.
There's a quantum of solace in that, for sure.