Laser redesign takes the heat off the internet
Tuesday 24 July 2012
The internet consumes vast amounts of energy due to the heat dissipated by the lasers transmitting the signal. Professor Stephen Sweeney of the Physics Department at Surrey explains in the Financial Times how semiconductor research at Surrey is tackling this problem.
The internet is an ever increasing consumer of energy generating significant amounts of waste heat in the process. The semiconductor lasers used to transmit data as light pulses are responsible for a lot of the power consumption due mainly to the need to maintain them at a constant operating temperature. Research by members of the Physics Department in the Advanced Technology Institute have tackled this by redesigning the laser to avoid the need to provide temperature control. The idea revolves around replacing a fraction of the arsenic or phosphorus atoms in the semiconductor lasers with bismuth, a Surrey idea which is expected to lead to a 5-10 fold reduction in energy demand.
This work is being carried out in the Photonics group led by Professor Stephen Sweeney and is part of a large European-funded project, BIANCHO (www.biancho.org). Stephen recently discussed the project with Clive Cookson of the Financial Times; the article can be found in full here.
