Now Martin Green from the University of New South Wales and his team have figured out how to make pure silicon glow – a major scientific and engineering first. His work is reported in Applied Physics Letters. Based on low temerature results so far, the researchers predict that the ‘internal’ light efficiency (ratio of the number of photons emitted and the total internal recombination rate per unit area) could be larger than 20% at room temperature. “The result means that ‘radiative recombination’ could be one of the dominant recombination channels in pure crystalline silicon,” said team member Thorsten Trupke. “This is in stark contrast to a widely accepted perception that silicon is an inherently poor light emitter.” Green’s group is now investigating ways to modulate the light emitted by the silicon and hopes to improve the surface texture of the samples to further increase efficiency. Can amazing optical-based electronics be far behind?