The novel material graphene and its technological
applications are studied at the Vienna University of Technology. Now scientists
have succeeded in combining graphene light detectors with semiconductor chips.
Today, most information is transmitted by light – for
example in optical fibres. Computer chips, however, work electronically.
Somewhere between the optical data highway and the electronic chips, photons
have to be converted into electrons using light-detectors. Scientists at the
Vienna University of Technology have now managed to combine a graphene
photodetector with a standard silicon chip. It can transform light of all
important frequencies used in telecommunications into electrical signals. The
scientific results have now been published in the journal “Nature Photonics”.