An international collaboration featuring 13 different universities is aiming to produce an electrically-pumped silicon laser to rival III-V optoelectronics. The Microphotonics Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has begun a $3.6 million research project into silicon-based lasers and nanophotonics. Funded by the US Government's Department of Defense (DoD) under the multi-university research initiative (MURI) program, the project, titled Electrically Pumped Silicon Based Lasers for Chip-Scale Nanophotonic Systems, is led by Lionel Kimerling, director of MIT's Materials Processing Center and Microphotonics Center. Although optically-pumped silicon lasers have been produced by Intel among others, electrical pumping has so far proved elusive - largely because of silicon's indirect bandgap. But if silicon can be made to lase in this way, it could have a major effect on III-V optoelectronics. The MURI project includes collaborators from eight US universities, as well as teams in Toronto and McMasters in Canada, Catania and Trento in Italy and FOM in the Netherlands.
http://mphotonics.mit.edu/