Scientists create 'nano LEDs'

Chemists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have stumbled upon a way of producing light from nanowires. While they were refining a method for producing horizontally-grown wires across a substrate, Babak Nikoobakht and Andrew Herzing electrically charged an array of junctions between two materials and caused illumination to occur. The pair hope to further refine the technique so that these nano LEDs can be applied in the development of light sources and detectors useful in photonic devices or lab-on-a-chip platforms.