Magazine – June 2008

Aixtron sails through credit jitters

After a year in which the credit crunch took its toll on the global financial markets, deposition equipment vendor Aixtron has maintained its position as the best-performing stock in the compound semiconductor basket.

Multi-faced LEDs introduce more color

Color-converting phosphors hamper the efficiencies of commercial white LEDs. But this can be avoided by switching to quantum-well growth on multiple facets, say Mitsuru Funato and Yoichi Kawakami from Kyoto University.

Osram explores the route to high-performance greens

Why are green LEDs so inefficient? Is it the result of poor carrier injection, high Auger loss, strong internal fields, or simply poor material quality, asks Osram's Matthias Peter.

Product Showcase

Lake Shore Cryotronics

III-V solar states its performance case

Looking out of the window on the train from Madrid to Seville, you might catch sight of a phalanx of solar panels in a key test plant for compound semiconductor-based energy production. With sites like this becoming increasingly common, the concentrating photovoltaic industry gathered in Madrid to report their systems' latest results at the CPV Today summit, and Andy Extance joined them.

Hall sensors have the power to deliver unforgettable memory

Hall sensors are incredibly versatile devices. They can analyze the constituents of mining samples, form accurate magnetometers and team up with tiny magnets to create a novel magnetic memory that retains its information when the power is switched off, says Micromem's Steven Van Fleet.

Ultra-fast VCSELs promise to turbocharge chip communication

The copper interconnects that route chip-to-chip data transfer are starting to reach their speed limit. But this looming bottleneck can be overcome by switching to ultra-fast VCSELs with tiny threshold currents, say Yu-Chia Chang and Larry Coldren from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Research Review

Electroluminescence exposes subcells...InGaAs laser breaks into telecom territory...Voids aid AlN formation.