We have demonstrated that it is possible. The technique opens the door for manufacturing whole new classes of devices in optoelectronics and microelectronics, for such items as new lasers, detectors, sensors, imaging systems, signal processing and computer chips, compact discs, data storage and dozens of other examples. The ability to grow single crystals of any material on silicon, for example, may breed an entire new generation of electronics. The Cornell team also presented their work at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Lasers and Electro-Optics Society annual meeting in November 1996 in Boston, by Lo, Ejeckam and Matthew Seaford, Cornell doctoral student also affiliated with the Air Force Wright Patterson Laboratory where he did this research, and the Sandia researchers. And it will be presented in May at the International Conference on Indium Phosphide and Related Materials in Hyannis, Mass., and the Materials Research Society meeting in San Francisco on March 31.
Semiconductors are tiny crystals, such as silicon or germanium, that conduct electricity.
They are the heart of all integrated circuits, which power everything from computers to cellular telephones to fiber communication networks. A major obstacle to the manufacture of various semiconductors is that the single-crystal semiconductor thin films must be deposited on a crystal of the same structure. For example, a light-emitting gallium arsenide thin film must be deposited on a gallium arsenide bulk substrate, or else defects will result and the semiconductor cannot be used. Each single crystal is characterized by its lattice structure and lattice constant. When a crystal layer is grown on a bulk crystal substrate, even a mismatch of 1 percent in their lattice constants causes problems.