Researchers discover new way to split and sum photons with silicon

Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and the University of California, Riverside have found a way to transfer energy between silicon and organic, carbon-based molecules—a breakthrough that has implications for information storage in quantum computing, solar energy conversion, and medical imaging. The discovery provides a way to boost silicon's efficiency by pairing it with a carbon-based material that converts blue photons into pairs of red photons that can be more efficiently used by silicon.