Integrating opposites

Lagally (left) and Kuech hope that combining materials will make devices more powerful.

Cellular telephones have become indispensable communications tools — all-in-one organizers that include such features as E-mail and Web access. And collaborative research between Professor Max Lagally, Chemical Engineering Professor Thomas Kuech, electrical engineers from Georgia Tech and a SUNY-Albany structural-analysis expert, may make the devices even more powerful.

The group hopes to integrate compound semiconductor devices made from fast, optically sensitive materials such as gallium arsenide with silicon, which offers increased computational power. One of the group's goals, which researchers have yet to accomplish, is to integrate the materials as a system. The results could have an immediate impact in defense applications where battlefield communication increasingly relies on wireless technologies. But the research also could translate into computers that quickly send mountains of data using optics instead of cables, or chemical and biological sensors in which one component integrates the optical emitters, detectors, micropumps and processors. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is funding the project through a three-year, $1.8 million grant.