Flexiconductors?

17 Jun 2002

Flexible semiconductors -- some of which were made with ordinary weatherstripping silicone and can be peeled right off their substrates -- have been developed by a group of University at Buffalo physicists. Described recently in Applied Physics Letters, they are the first single-crystal, semiconducting nanomaterials that bend, but don't break. They can be peeled right off their supports almost as though one were peeling an address label from a sheet of labels.

Because they retain both their structural integrity and optical properties, the semiconductors are seen as particularly significant for future advances in optical computing, where information will be carried by light instead of by electrons.

"These semiconductors could help expedite the transition from electronics to optical computers by allowing us to exploit optics in semiconductors much more efficiently than has been possible," said Hong Luo, Ph.D., assistant professor of physics at UB who headed the research group.