• Me: How's that going for you?
• Rich: Good. Making very tiny things.
• Me: Like what?
• Rich: I sent you a picture
• Me: Uhh...what is it?
• Rich: A very tiny thing.
• Me: What does the very tiny thing do?
• Rich: Detects light
• Me: So where would you use this thing? Where is it supposed to detect light? Any light or special hard to find light?
• Rich: Special hard to find light it's for chip telecommunications it's like a fiber optic cable on a chip you use a photodetector to switch from an optical signal to an electrical one.
• Me: Interesting. how does it switch?
• Rich: the stripes are electrical contacts that you apply a voltage bias across light going into the waveguide gets absorbed and each photon creates an electron-hole pair the electron and hole move in opposite directions due to the applied bias and you generate a current which is proportional to the number of photons that you absorb.
• Me: Uhhh
• Rich: hahaha I bet that you are glad that you asked.

2 years ago · Notes