Nanowire photodetectors
According to researchers at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD), semiconducting nanowires can be used to build perfect light detectors with single-photon sensitivity. The zinc oxide (ZnO) nanowires they’ve used are ideally suited to develop “new photodetector architectures for sensing, imaging, memory storage, intrachip optical communications and other nanoscale applications.” So far, the engineers have demonstrated in their labs that nanowires are extremely sensitive photodetectors because of their specific geometry which combines large surface areas and small volumes. Now we have to wait for real applications.