(June 15, 2015) Led by Young Duck Kim, a postdoctoral research scientist in
James Hone’s group at Columbia Engineering, a team of scientists from Columbia,
Seoul National University (SNU), and Korea Research Institute of Standards and
Science (KRISS) reported today that they have demonstrated—for the first
time—an on-chip visible light source using graphene, an atomically thin and
perfectly crystalline form of carbon, as a filament. They attached small strips
of graphene to metal electrodes, suspended the strips above the substrate, and
passed a current through the filaments to cause them to heat up. The study,
“Bright Visible Light Emission from Graphene,” is published in the Advance
Online Publication (AOP) on Nature Nanotechnology's website on June 15.
“We’ve created what is essentially the world’s thinnest
light bulb,” says Hone, Wang Fon-Jen Professor of Mechanical Engineering at
Columbia Engineering and coauthor of the study. “This new type of ‘broadband’
light emitter can be integrated into chips and will pave the way towards the
realization of atomically thin, flexible, and transparent displays, and
graphene-based on-chip optical communications.”