World's thinnest light bulb is here

New York: Imagine how thin a light 'bulb' could be? Well, it could be just one atom thick! Using graphene - an atomically thin and perfectly crystalline form of carbon as a filament, scientists have demonstrated for the first time an on-chip visible light source.

They attached small strips of graphene to metal electrodes, suspended the strips above the substrate, and passed current through the filaments to cause them to heat up. The visible light from atomically thin graphene is so intense that it is visible even to the naked eye, without any additional magnification, said researchers.

Creating light in small structures on the surface of a chip is crucial for developing fully integrated 'photonic' circuits that do with light what is now done with electric currents in semiconductor integrated circuits.