Better solar cells, better LED light and vast optical possibilities

NTNU researchers Dheeraj Dasa and Helge Weman have, in cooperation with IBM, discovered that gallium arsenide can be tuned with a small strain to function efficiently as a single light-emitting diode or a photodetector. This is facilitated by the special hexagonal crystal structure, referred to as wurtzite, which the NTNU researchers have succeeded in growing in the MBE lab at NTNU. The results were published in Nature Communications. The last few years have seen significant breakthroughs in nanowire and graphene research at NTNU. In 2010, Professors Helge Weman, Bjørn-Ove Fimland and Ton van Helvoort and their academic group went public with their first groundbreaking discoveries within the field.