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Technology Stocks : White light from LED -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Finley who wrote (499)	8/20/2002 1:33:28 PM
From: Sidney Street	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 565

Not sure if this is really new.... smalltimes.com GEORGIA TECH RESEARCH SHEDS LIGHT LUMINESCENT MOLECULES By Mike Toner The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Aug. 13, 2002 – In the small, small world of nanotechnology, Georgia Tech researchers are casting a little light – one with bright prospects for what could be the next industrial revolution. Tech scientists said Monday that they had created what may be the world's smallest light source – a luminescent glow emitted by a molecule of silver. Under a microscope, the multicolored glow emitted by a chain of silver molecules looks for all the world like a string of Christmas tree lights. The total light output is many times fainter than the glow of a firefly, but it marks a significant step into a world of microscopic light sources that could someday lead to molecule-sized "lights-in-a-chip" to enable computing at the speed of light. "These molecules emit light very strongly," said Robert Dickson, assistant professor at Georgia Tech's School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Dickson and his collaborators, Tae-Hee Lee and Jose Gonzales, reported their research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The effect was discovered by exposing small clusters of silver molecules to an electrical current. Dickson says the team has also observed luminescence in copper, which is already being used in the manufacture of computer chips. In the realm of technological innovation, from transistors to lasers, the usefulness of discoveries is seldom clear at the time of discovery. Nanotechnology, the engineering of tools and structures at scales of billionths of a meter, is no exception. "Because we can produce all of the colors of the visible spectrum – red, blue, green and orange – this could be a potentially useful tool," says Dickson. "But it's early to say where this technology might lead. Right now we're just amazed that we can produce it and want to find out why it works."