Black Silicon - A Discovery for Photographers
Black silicon is a new material developed at Harvard by physicist Eric Mazur. According to our sources, Harvard is not wasting any time in pursuing the commercialization of the material. Harvard is supposed to announce a licensing agreement with SiOnyx, a startup company, to commercialize the material.
To create the product, Mazur shined an incredibly powerful laser onto a silicon wafer. At the same time, Mazur and his colleagues applied sulfur hexafluoride to the surface of the silicon. This is the chemical that the semiconductor industry uses to make etchings in silicon for circuitry. The laser in addition to the application of the chemical compound created a surface covered with microscopic spikes. This increased the surface area of the silicon resulting in a material that is reported to have 100-500X more sensitivity to light than a traditional silicon wafer.
Since the new material will use the same manufacturing process as existing semiconductor facilities, the material has immediate applications in night vision products. It won’t be long before you see this new silicon make its way into digital photography. Of course, there will have to be massive changes to current image processors to work with black silicon.
