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Boffins create black silicon
BOFFINS AT HARVARD might have changed the digital photography, solar power and night vision industries forever with something they are calling black silicon.
Black silicon is 100 to 500 times more sensitive to light than a traditional silicon wafer and is created by blasting a laser onto a silicon wafer until it is toast.
If you match all the energy produced by the sun falling onto the Earth's entire surface at a given moment in time and mix in some sulphur hexafluoride, you get black silicon.
The project was done for a lark by the inventor Harvard physicist Eric Mazur who was worried that his funding from the army was about to dry up.
While the silicon was black to the naked eye, it was made up of thousands, if not millions, of tiny spikes.
The spikes had an amazing effect on the light sensitivity of the wafer. Not only can it absorb about twice as much visible light as traditional silicon, it can also see infrared light that is invisible to today's silicon detectors.
Apparently it can be made without too much extra cash as well. µ
L'Inq
Gizmodo
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the headline should be somthing like "Harvard boffins bring black silicon to the masses"

http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2008/10/12/sionyx-brings-black-silicon-into-the-light-material-could-upend-solar-imaging-industries/

When i was in Uni in the first part of the decade, i made loads of plans on ways to maximise the use of Black Silicon for the creation of Solar Panels. However the main problem i could not crack is how to mass produce the panels in Africa without building several Nuclear power stations and associated energy grid.
Sensitivity != Efficiency

A highly sensitive system will have great signal to noise. A highly efficient system will convert a large % of one thing to another (e.g. light to elections).

Personally, this is exactly what I've been waiting for, and will be for another 20 years. ;-)
Someone should try creating these spikes on cheap graphene or carbon
in the beginning 100x times at the end 2x times :-)
Best CCD sensors have ~70% effeciency, so look like we get energy for free :-}
http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/1999/12.09/silicon.html

1999 - nearly 10 years ago, as I said. Straight from memory.
saw this on tv nearly 10 years ago. One boffin was working on silicon, his mate on lasers, they decided to shoot some silicon with a laser. It went black, microscopic analysis showed that it had formed spikes with balls on top, which meant that incident radiation instead of being absorbed or reflected would get deflected within the forest of spikes, meaning that a much higher amount, something like 80% would be absorbed. Varying the laser pulse in power and duration varied the height of the spikes and the sizes of the balls. it was predicted that it would revolutionise photovoltaics, antennas and many other things. Never heard of it again, till now. Nothing new under the sun, and all that.