Light-emitting microchips could transform the future of computing and University of Twente (UT) researcher Floris Zwanenburg is helping lead the way. Together with Erik Bakkers (TU/e) and Jonathan Finley (Technical University of Munich), Zwanenburg has secured a €14 million ERC Synergy Grant to turn this ambitious vision into reality with the project “Bright Chips”.
Microchips are essential to modern technology and light-emitting chips are the holy grail of future computing technologies. But for chips to produce light — a feature that would make them faster and more efficient — a fundamental property of the materials used to make our microchips needs to change. “We must change how atoms are arranged relative to each other,” says Zwanenburg. Therefore the researchers will develop light-emitting chips with a new material called silicon germanium (SiGe). SiGe is an alloy that has been shown in recent years to have the right properties to emit light.